

VjTffKiHTfTS 

• v» !,•#; r -*v 


piiji 


! • i •* 

rV 

ffif* 

i|S 

tfctjp: 

$Hid 



**■<* <*»k» J L v i 1 1* 4 rfWjfT f » < 


f#MF' 

Mb, 


n”W' , HW/r7V i iU* ' 

nnwMW 

iMMte 

fflwfi9tS3ftfV *•*?£/* * f V ''*'■ * '■* t, * -; •••» • * ! * 











PLAIN TALES FROM THE HILLS 



















































■* 


v. y- 

• : ;1t- « 

W? V >7.* ,'i 
' 

A iv 




=vr 






1 








MDCCCXOX: PUBLISHED BY THE LOVELL COM- 
PANY : : 23 DUANE STREET, NEW YORK CITY 

























PLAIN TALES 

tYl 

FROM 

THE HILLS 


BY 



RUDYARD KIPLING 

H 


New York 
THE LOVELL COMPANY 
23 Duane Street 




% 





”*rr than'st'eh 

JUN * ** 





l 

c 

« 

€ 






























CONTENTS. 


PAGE. 

Lispeth i 

Three and — an Extra 8 

Thrown Away 14 

Miss Youghal’s Sais 26 

Yoked with an Unbeliever 34 

False Dawn 40 

The Rescue of Pluffles 51 

Cupid’s Arrows ' 58 

The Three Musketeers 64 

His Chance in Life 72 

Watches of the Night 79 

The Other Man 86 

Consequences.. 91 

The Conversion of Aurelian McGoggin 98 

The Taking of Lungtungpen 105 

A Germ Destroyer 113 

Kidnapped 120 

The Arrest of Lieutenant Golightly 127 

In the House of Suddhoo 134 

His Wedded Wife 145 

The Broken-Link Handicap 152 

Beyond the Pale 159 

In Error 167 

A Bank Fraud 173 

Tods’ Amendment 182 




f 

v 




/ 




IV 


Contents 


The Daughter of the Regiment 

In the Pride of His Youth 

Pig 

The Rout of the White Hussars.. 
The Bronckhorst Divorce Case. .. 

Venus Annodomini 

The Bisara of Pooree 

The Gate of the Hundred Sorrows 
The Madness of Private Ortheris.. 
The Story of Muhammad Din .... 
On the Strength of a Likeness .... 
Wressley of the Foreign Office. .. 

By Word of Mouth 

To be Filed for Reference 



197 

205 

214 

227 

234 


240 


247 

256 

266 

271 

279 

286 

292 


LISPETH ' 
























j 







PLAIN TALES FROM THE HILLS 


LISPETH. 


Look, you have cast out Love ! What Gods are these 
You bid me please ? 

The Three in One, the One in Three ? Not so ! 

To my own Gods I go. 

It may be they shall give me greater ease 
Than your cold Christ and tangled Trinities. 

The Convert. 


She was the daughter of Sonoo, a Hill-man, 
and Jadgh his wife. One year their maize failed, 
and two bears spent the night in their only 
poppy-field just above the Sutlej Valley on the 
Kotgarh side ; so, next season, they turned Chris- 
tian, and brought their baby to the Mission to 
be baptized. The Kotgarh Chaplain christened 
her Elizabeth, and " Lispeth ” is the Hill or 
fiahciri pronunciation. 

Later, cholera came into the Kotgarh Valley 
and carried off Sonoo and Jadeh, and Lispeth 
became half-servant, half-companion, to the wife 
of the then Chaplain of Kotgarh. This was after 
the reign of the Moravian missionaries, but be- 
fore Kotgarh had quite forgotten her title of 
" Mistress of the Northern Hills.” 

Whether Christianity improved Lispeth, or 
whether the gods of her own people would have 
done as much for her under any circumstances, 

I 


2 Lispeth 

I do not know ; but she grew very lovely. When 
a Hill girl grows lovely, she is worth traveling 
fifty miles over bad ground to look upon. Lis- 
peth had a Greek face — one of those faces people 
paint so often, and see so seldom. She was of a 
pale, ivory color and, for her race, extremely 
tall. Also, she possessed eyes that were won- 
derful ; and, had she not been dressed in the 
abominable print-cloths affected by Missions, you 
would, meeting her on the hillside unexpectedly, 
have thought her the original Diana of the 
Romans going out to slay. 

Lispeth took to Christianity readily, and did 
not abandon it when she reached womanhood, 
as do some Hill girls. Her own people hated 
her because she had, they said, become a mem- 
sahib and washed herself daily ; and the Chap- 
lain’s wife did not know what to do with her. 
Somehow, one cannot ask a stately goddess, five 
foot ten in her shoes, to clean plates and dishes. 
So she played with the Chaplain’s children and 
took classes in the Sunday School, and read all 
the books in the house, and grew more and more 
beautiful, like the Princesses in fairy tales. The 
Chaplain’s wife said that the girl ought to take 
service in Simla as a nurse or something “ gen- 
teel.” But Lispeth did not want to take service. 
She was very happy where she was. 

When travelers — there were not many in those 
years — came in to Kotgarh, Lispeth used to lock 
herself into her own room for fear they might 
take her away to Simla, or somewhere out into 
the unknown world. 

One day, a few months after she was seventeen 
years old, Lispeth went out for a walk. She did 
not walk in the manner of English ladies — a 


Lispeth 3 

mile and a half out, and a ride back again. She 
covered between twenty and thirty miles in her 
little constitutionals, all about and about, be- 
tween Kotgarh and Narkunda. This time she 
came back at full dusk, stepping down the break- 
neck descent into Kotgarh with something heavy 
in her arms. The Chaplain’s wife was dozing in 
the drawing-room when Lispeth came in breath- 
ing hard and very exhausted with her burden. 
Lispeth put it down on the sofa, and said sim- 
ply : — “ This is my husband. I found him on 
the Bagi Road. He has hurt himself. We will 
nurse him, and when he is well, your husband 
shall marry him to me.” 

This was the first mention Lispeth had ever 
made of her matrimonial views, and the Chap- 
lain’s wife shrieked with horror. However, the 
man on the sofa needed attention first. He was 
a young Englishman, and his head had been cut 
to the bone by something jagged. Lispeth said 
she had found him down the khud , so she had 
brought him in. He was breathing queerly and 
was unconscious. 

He was put to bed and tended by the Chaplain, 
who knew something of medicine ; and Lispeth 
waited outside the door in case she could be use- 
ful. She explained to the Chaplain that this was 
the man she meant to marry ; and the Chaplain 
and his wife lectured her severely on the impro- 
priety of her conduct. Lispeth listened quietly, 
and repeated her first proposition. It takes a 
great deal of Christianity to wipe out uncivilized 
Eastern instincts, such as falling in love at first 
sight. Lispeth, having found the man she wor- 
shiped, did not see why she should keep silent 
as to her choice. She had no intention of being 


4 Lispeth 

sent away* either. She was going to nurse that 
Englishman until he was well enough to marry 
her. This was her little program. 

After a fortnight of slight fever and inflamma- 
tion, the Englishman recovered coherence and 
thanked the Chaplain and his wife, and Lispeth 
— especially Lispeth — for their kindness. He 
was a traveler in the East, he said — they never 
talked about “ globe-trotters ” in those days, 
when the P. & O. fleet was young and small — 
and had come from Dehra Dun to hunt for plants 
and butterflies among the Simla hills. No one 
at Simla, therefore, knew anything about him. 
He fancied he must have fallen over the 01111 
while stalking a fern on a rotten tree-trunk, and 
that his coolies must have stolen his baggage 
and fled. He thought he would go back to Simla 
when he was a little stronger. He desired no 
more mountaineering. 

He made small haste to go away, and re- 
covered his strength slowly. Lispeth objected to 
being advised either by the Chaplain or his wife ; 
so the latter spoke to the Englishman, and told 
him how matters stood in Lispeth ’s heart. He 
laughed a good deal, and said it was very pretty 
and romantic, a perfect idyl of the Himalayas ; 
but, as he was engaged to a girl at Home, he 
fancied that nothing would happen. Certainly 
he would behave with discretion. He did that. 
Still he found it very pleasant to talk to Lispeth, 
and walk with Lispeth, and say nice things to 
her, and call her pet names while he was getting 
strong enough to go away. It meant nothing at 
all to him, and everything in the world to Lis- 
peth. She was very happy while the fortnight 
lasted, because she had found a man to love. 


Lispeth 5 

Being a savage by birth, she took no trouble 
to hide her feelings, and the Englishman was 
amused. When he went away, Lispeth walked 
with him up the Hill as far as Narkunda, very 
troubled and very miserable. The Chaplain’s 
wife, being a good Christian and disliking any- 
thing in the shape of fuss or scandal — Lispeth 
was beyond her management entirely — had told 
the Englishman to tell Lispeth that he was com- 
ing back to marry her. “ She is but a child you 
know, and, I fear, at heart a heathen,” said the 
Chaplain’s wife. So all the twelve miles up the 
hill the Englishman, with his arm around Lis- 
peth’s waist, was assuring the girl that he would 
come back and marry her ; and Lispeth made 
him promise over and over again. She wept on 
the Narkunda Ridge till he had passed out of 
sight along the Muttiani path. 

Then she dried her tears and went in to Kot- 
garh again, and said to the Chaplain’s wife : 
“ He will come back and marry me. He has 
gone to his own people to tell them so.” And 
the Chaplain’s wife soothed Lispeth and said : 
“He will come back.” At the end of two months,. 
Lispeth grew impatient, and was told that the 
Englishman had gone over the seas to England. 
She knew where England was, because she had 
read little geography primers ; but, of course, 
she had no conception of the nature of the sea, 
being a Hill girl. There was an old puzzle-map 
of the World in the house. Lispeth had played 
with it when she was a child. She unearthed it 
again, and put it together of evenings, and cried 
to herself, and tried to imagine where her Eng- 
lishman was. As she had no ideas of distance 
or steamboats, her notions were somewhat 


6 Lispeth 

erroneous. It would not have made the least 
difference had she been perfectly correct ; for 
the Englishman had no intention of coming back 
to marry a Hill girl. He forgot all about her 
by the time he was butterfly-hunting in Assam. 
He wrote a book on the East afterwards. Lis- 
peth’s name did not appear. 

At the end of three months, Lispeth made daily 
pilgrimage to Narkunda to see if her English- 
man was coming along the road. It gave her 
comfort, and the Chaplain’s wife finding her 
happier thought that she was getting over her 
“barbarous and most indelicate folly.” A little 
later the walks ceased to help Lispeth and her 
temper grew very bad. The Chaplain’s wife 
thought this a profitable time to let her know 
the real state of affairs — that the Englishman 
had only promised his love to keep her quiet — 
that he had never meant anything, and that it 
was “ wrong and improper” of Lispeth to think 
of marriage with an Englishman, who was of a 
superior clay, besides being promised in mar- 
riage to a girl of his own people. Lispeth said 
that all this was clearly impossible because he 
had said he loved her, and the Chaplain’s wife 
had, with her own lips, asserted that the Eng- 
lishman was coming back. 

“ How can what he and you said be untrue ? ” 
asked Lispeth. 

“We said it as an excuse to keep you quiet, 
child,” said the Chaplain’s wife. 

“Then you have lied to me,” said Lispeth, 
•* you and he ? ” 

The Chaplain’s wife bowed her head, and said 
nothing. Lispeth was silent, too, for a little time ; 
then she went out down the valley, and returned 


Lispeth 7 

in the dress of a Hill girl — infamously dirty, but 
without the nose and ear rings. She had her 
hair braided into the long pigtail, helped out 
with black thread, that Hill women wear. 

“ I am going back to my own people,” said 
she. “ You have killed Lispeth. There is only 
left old Jad^h’s daughter — the daughter of a 
Pahari and the servant of Tarka Devi. You 
are all liars, you English.” 

By the time that the Chaplain’s wife had re- 
covered from the shock of the announcement 
that Lispeth had ’verted to her mother’s gods, 
the girl had gone ; and she never came back. 

She took to her own unclean people savagely, 
as if to make up the arrears of the life she had 
stepped out of; and, in a little time, she married 
a wood-cutter who beat her, after the manner of 
paharis , and her beauty faded soon. 

“There is no law whereby you can account 
for the vagaries of the heathen,” said the Chap- 
lain’s wife, “ and I believe that Lispeth was always 
at heart an infidel.” Seeing she had been taken 
into the Church of England at the mature age of 
five weeks, this statement does not do credit to 
the Chaplain’s wife. 

Lispeth was a very old woman when she died. 
She always had a perfect command of English, 
and when she was sufficiently drunk, could some- 
times be induced to tell the story of her first 
love-affair. 

It was hard then to realize that the bleared, 
wrinkled creature, so like a wisp of charred rag, 
could ever have been “ Lispeth of the Kotgarh 
Mission.” 


8 


Three and — an Extra 


THREE AND AN EXTRA. 


** When halter and heel ropes are slipped, do not give chase with 
sticks but with gram." 

Punjabi Proverb. 


After marriage arrives a reaction, sometimes 
a big. sometimes a little, one ; but it comes sooner 
or later, and must be tided over by both parties 
if they desire the rest of their lives to go with 
the current. 

In the case of the Cusack-Bremmils this re- 
action did not set in till the third year after the 
wedding. Bremmil was hard to hold at the best 
of times ; but he was a beautiful husband until 
the baby died and Mrs. Bremmil wore black, and 
grew thin, and mourned as if the bottom of the 
Universe had fallen out. Perhaps Bremmil 
ought to have comforted her. He tried to do so, 
I think ; but the more he comforted the more 
Mrs. Bremmil grieved, and, consequently, the 
more uncomfortable Bremmil grew. The fact 
was that they both needed a tonic. And they 
got it. Mrs. Bremmil can afford to laugh now, 
but it was no laughing matter to her at the time. 

You see, Mrs. Hauksbee appeared on the hori- 
zon ; and where she existed was fair chance 
of trouble. At Simla her by-name was the 
“ Stormy Petrel.” She had won that title five 
times to my own certain knowledge. She was a 
little, brown, thin, almost skinny, woman, with 
big, rolling, violet-blue eyes, and the sweetest 
manners in the world. You had only to mention 
her name at afternoon teas for every woman in 


Three and — an Extra 


9 


the room to rise up, and call her — well — not 
blessed. She was clever, witty, brilliant, and 
sparkling beyond most of her kind ; but possessed 
of many devils of malice and mischievousness. 
She could be nice, though, even to her own sex. 
But that is another story. 

Bremmil went off at score after the baby’s 
death and the general discomfort that followed, 
and Mrs. Hauksbee annexed him. She took no 
pleasure in hiding her captives. She annexed 
him publicly, and saw that the public saw it. 
He rode with her, and walked with her, and 
talked with her, and picnicked with her, and 
tiffined at Peliti’s with her, till people put up 
their eyebrows and said : “ Shocking ! ” Mrs. 
Bremmil stayed at home turning over the dead 
baby’s frocks and crying into the empty cradle. 
She did not care to do anything else. But some 
eight dear, affectionate lady-friends explained the 
situation at length to her in case she should miss 
the cream of it. Mrs. Bremmil listened quietly, 
and thanked them for their good offices. She 
was not as clever as Mrs. Hauksbee, but she 
was no fool. She kept her own counsel, and 
did not speak to Bremmil of what she had heard. 
This is worth remembering. Speaking to, or 
crying over, a husband never did any good 
yet. 

When Bremmil was at home, which was not 
often, he was more affectionate than usual ; and 
that showed his hand. The affection was forcfed 
partly to soothe his own conscience and partly to 
soothe Mrs. Bremmil. It failed in both regards. 

Then “ the A.-D.-C. in Waiting was com- 
manded by Their Excellencies, Lord and Lady 
Lytton, to invite Mr. and Mrs. Cusack-Bremmil 


10 


Three and — an Extra 


to Peterhoff on July 26th at 9-30 p.m.” — “ Danc- 
ing ” in the bottom-left-hand corner. 

“ I can’t go,” said Mrs. Bremmil, “ it is too 
soon after poor little Florrie .... but it need 
not stop you, Tom.” 

She meant what she said then, and Bremmil 
said that he would go just to put in an appear- 
ance. Here he spoke the thing which was not ; 
and Mrs. Bremmil knew it. She guessed — a 
woman’s guess is much more accurate than a 
man’s certainty — that he had meant to go from 
the first, and with Mrs. Hauksbee. She sat 
down to think, and the outcome of her thoughts 
was that the memory of a dead child was worth 
considerably less than the affections of a living 
husband. She made her plan and staked her all 
upon it. In that hour she discovered that she 
knew Tom Bremmil thoroughly, and this knowl- 
edge she acted on. 

“ Tom,” said she, “ I shall be dining out at 
the Longmores’ on the evening of the 26th. 
You’d better dine at the Club.” 

This saved Bremmil from making an excuse 
to get away and dine with Mrs. Hauksbee, so he 
was grateful, and felt small and mean at the same 
time — which was wholesome. Bremmil left the 
house at five for a ride. About half-past five in 
the evening a large leather-covered basket came 
in from Phelps’ for Mrs. Bremmil. She was a 
woman who knew how to dress ; and she had 
not spent a week on designing that dress and 
having it gored, and hemmed, and herring-boned, 
and tucked and rucked (or whatever the terms 
are), for nothing. It was a gorgeous dress — 
slight mourning. I can’t describe it, but it was 
what The Queen calls “ a creation ” — a thing that 


Three and— an Extra 


ii 


hit you straight between the eyes and made you 
gasp. She had not much heart for what she 
was going to do ; but as she glanced at the long 
mirror she had the satisfaction of knowing that 
she had never looked so well in her life. She 
was a large blonde and, when she chose, carried 
herself superbly. 

After the dinner at the Longmores, she went 
on to the dance — a little late — and encountered 
Bremmil with Mrs. Hauksbee on his arm. That 
made her flush, and as the men crowded round 
her for dances she looked magnificent. She 
filled up all her dances except three, and those 
she left blank. Mrs. Hauksbee caught her eye 
once ; and she knew it was war — real war — be- 
tween them. She started handicapped in the 
struggle, for she had ordered Bremmil about just 
the least little bit in the world too much ; and he 
was beginning to resent it. Moreover, he had 
never seen his wife look so lovely. He stared at 
her from doorways, and glared at her from pas- 
sages as she went about with her partners ; and 
the more he stared, the more taken was he. He 
could scarcely believe that this was the woman 
with the red eyes and the black stuff gown who 
used to weep over the eggs at breakfast. 

Mrs. Hauksbee did her best to hold him in 
play but, after two dances, he crossed over to 
his wife and asked for a dance. 

“ I’m afraid you’ve come too late, Mister 
Bremmil,” she said with her eyes twinkling. 

Then he begged her to give him a dance, and, 
as a great favor, she allowed him the fifth waltz. 
Luckily 5 stood vacant on his program. They 
danced it together, and there was a little flutter 
round the room. Bremmil had a sort of a notion 


12 


Three and — an Extra 


that his wife could dance, but he never knew she 
danced so divinely. At the end of that waltz he 
asked for another — as a favor, not as a right ; 
and Mrs. Bremmil said: “Show me your pro- 
gram, dear ! ” He showed it as a naughty little 
schoolboy hands up contraband sweets to a 
master. There was a fair sprinkling of “ H ” 
on it, besides “ H ” at supper. Mrs. Bremmil 
said nothing, but she smiled contemptuously, ran 
her pencil through 7 and 9 — two “H’s” — and 
returned the card with her own name written 
above — a pet name that only she and her hus- 
band used. Then she shook her finger at him, 
and said, laughing : “ Oh you silly, silly boy 1 ” 

Mrs. Hauksbee heard that, and — she owned as 
much — felt she had the worst of it. Bremmil 
accepted 7 and 9 gratefully. They danced 7, and 
sat out 9 in one of the little tents. What Brem- 
mil said and what Mrs. Bremmil did is no con- 
cern of any one’s. 

When the band struck up “ The Roast Beef 
of Old England,” the two went out into the 
veranda, and Bremmil began looking for his 
wife’s dandy (this was before ’rickshaw days) 
while she went into the cloak-room. Mrs. 
Hauksbee came up and said : “ You take me 
in to supper, I think, Mr. Bremmil ? ” Bremmil 
turned red and looked foolish : “ Ah — h’m ! I’m 
going home with my wife, Mrs. Hauksbee. I 
think there has been a little mistake.” Being a 
man, he spoke as though Mrs. Hauksbee were 
entirely responsible. 

Mrs. Bremmil came out of the cloak-room, in 
a swansdown cloak with a white “ cloud ” round 
her head. She looked radiant ; and she had a 
right to. 


Three and — an Extra 


13 


The couple went off into the darkness to- . 
gether, Bremmil riding very close to the dandy. 

Then says Mrs. Hauksbee to me — she looked 
a trifle faded and jaded in the lamplight : “ Take 
my word for it, the silliest woman can manage a 
clever man ; but it needs a very clever woman to 
manage a fool ! ” 

Then we went in to supper. 


14 


Thrown Away 


THROWN AWAY 


“ And some are sulky, while some will plunge 
[£<? ho ! Steady ! Stand still, you ! ] 

Some you must gentle, and some you must lunge. 

[There ! There ! Who wants to kill you ?] 

Some— there are losses in every trade — 

Will break their hearts ere bitted and made, 

Will fight like fiends as the rope cuts hard. 

And die dumb-mad in the breaking-yard.” 

Toolungala Stockyard Chorus. 

To rear a boy under what parents call the 
“sheltered life system” is, if the boy must go 
into the world and fend for himself, not wise. 
Unless he be one in a thousand he has certainly 
to pass through many unnecessary troubles ; and 
may, possibly, come to extreme grief simply from 
ignorance of the proper proportions of things. 

Let a puppy eat the soap in the bath-room or 
chew a newly-blacked boot. He chews and 
chuckles until, by and by, he finds out that black- 
ing and Old Brown Windsor make him very sick ; 
so he argues that soap and boots are not whole- 
some. Any old dog about the house will soon 
show him the unwisdom of biting big dogs’ ears. 
Being young, he remembers and goes abroad, at 
six months, a well-mannered little beast with a 
chastened appetite. If he had been kept away 
from boots, and soap, and big dogs till he came 
to the trinity full-grown and with developed teeth, 
just consider how fearfully sick and thrashed 
he would be ! Apply that motion to the 
“sheltered life,” and see how it works. It does 
not sound pretty, but it is the better of two evils. 

There was a Boy once who had been brought 


Thrown Away 15 

up under the “ sheltered life ” theory ; and the 
theory killed him dead. He stayed with his 
people all his days, from the hour he was born 
till the hour he went into Sandhurst nearly at the 
top of the list. He was beautifully taught in all 
that wins marks by a private tutor, and carried 
the extra weight of “ never having given his 
parents an hour’s anxiety in his life.” What he 
learnt at Sandhurst beyond the regular routine is 
of no great consequence. He looked about him, 
and he found soap and blacking, so to speak, 
very good. He ate a little, and came out of 
Sandhurst not so high as he went in. Then 
there was an interval and a scene with his peo- 
ple, who expected much from him. Next a year 
of living “ unspotted from the world ” in a third- 
rate depot battalion where all the juniors were 
children, and all the seniors old women ; and 
lastly he came out to India where he was cut off 
from the support of his parents, and had no one 
to fall back on in time of trouble except him- 
self. 

Now India is a place beyond all others where 
one must not take things too seriously — the mid- 
day sun always excepted. Too much work and 
too much energy kill a man just as effectively as 
too much assorted vice or too much drink. 
Flirtation does not matter, because every one is 
being transferred and either you or she leaves 
the Station, and never return. Good work does 
not matter, because a man is judged by his worst 
output and another man takes all the credit of 
his best as a rule. Bad work does not matter, 
because other men do worse and incompetents 
hang on longer in India than anywhere else.. 
Amusements do not matter, because you must 


1 6 Thrown Away 

repeat them as soon as you have accomplished 
them once, and most amusements only mean 
trying to win another person’s money. Sick- 
ness does not matter, because it’s all in the day’s 
work, and if you die another man takes over 
your place and your office in the eight hours 
between death and burial. Nothing matters ex- 
cept Home-furlough and acting allowances, and 
these only because they are scarce. This is a 
slack, kutcha country where all men work with 
imperfect instruments ; and the wisest thing is to 
take no one and nothing in earnest, but to escape 
as soon as ever you can to some place where 
amusement is amusement and a reputation worth 
the having. 

But this Boy — the tale is as old as the Hills — 
came out, and took all things seriously. He was 
pretty and was petted. He took the pettings 
seriously, and fretted over women not worth sad- 
dling a pony to call upon. He found his new 
free life in India very good. It does look attrac- 
tive in the beginning, from a Subaltern’s point of 
view — all ponies, partners, dancing, and so on. 
He tasted it as the puppy tastes the soap. Only 
he came late to the eating, with a grown set of 
teeth. He had no sense of balance — just like 
the puppy — and could not understand why he 
was not treated with the consideration he re- 
ceived under his father’s roof. This hurt his 
feelings. 

He quarreled with other boys and, being sen- 
sitive to the marrow, remembered these quarrels, 
and they excited him. He found whist, and 
gymkhanas, and things of that kind (meant to 
amuse one after office) good ; but he took them 
seriously too, just as ^seriously as he took the 


Thrown Away 17 

head ” that followed after drink. He lost his 
money over whist and gymkhanas because they 
were new to him. 

He took his losses seriously, and wasted as 
much energy and interest over a two-goldmohur 
race for maiden ekka - ponies with their manes 
hogged, as if it had been the Derby. One half 
of this came from inexperience — much as the 
puppy squabbles with the corner of the hearth- 
rug — and the other half from the dizziness bred 
by stumbling out of his quiet life into the glare 
and excitement of a livelier one. No one told 
him about the soap and the blacking, because 
an average man takes it for granted that an 
average man is ordinarily careful in regard to 
them. It was pitiful to watch The Boy knocking 
himself to pieces, as an over-handled colt falls 
down and cuts himself when he gets away from 
the groom. 

This unbridled license in amusements not 
worth the trouble of breaking line for, much less 
rioting over, endured for six months — all through 
one cold weather — and then we thought that the 
heat and the knowledge of having lost his money 
and health and lamed his horses would sober 
The Boy down, and he would stand steady. In 
ninety-nine cases out of a hundred this would 
have happened. You can see the principle work- 
ing in any Indian Station. But this particular 
case fell through because The Boy was sensitive 
and took things seriously — as I may have said 
some seven times before. Of course, we couldn’t 
tell how his excesses struck him personally. 
They were nothing very heart-breaking or above 
the average. He might be crippled for life fi- 
nancially, and want a little nursing. Still the 
2 


1 8 Thrown Away 

memory of his performances would wither away 
in one hot weather, and the shroff would help 
him to tide over the money-troubles. But he 
must have taken another view altogether and 
have believed himself ruined beyond redemption. 
His Colonel talked to him severely when the cold 
weather ended. That made him more wretched 
than ever ; and it was only an ordinary “ Col- 
onel’s wigging ! ” 

What follows is a curious instance of the fash- 
ion in which we are all linked together and made 
responsible for one another. The thing that 
kicked the beam in The Boy’s mind was a remark 
that a woman made when he was talking to her. 
There is no use in repeating t, for it was only a 
cruel little sentence, rapped out before thinking, 
that made him flush to the roots of his hair. He 
kept himself to himself for three days, and then 
put in for two days’ leave to go shooting near a 
Canal Engineer’s Rest House about thirty miles 
out. He got his leave, and that night at Mess 
was noisier and more offensive than ever. He 
said that he was “ going to shoot big game,” 
and left at half-past ten o’clock in an ekka . 
Partridge — which was the only thing a man 
could get near the Rest House — is not big game ; 
so every one laughed. 

■Next morning one of the Majors came in from 
short leave, and heard that The Boy had gone 
out to shoot “ big game.” The Major had taken 
an interest in The Boy, and had, more than once, 
tried to check him in the cold weather. The 
Major put up his eyebrows when he heard of the 
expedition and went to The Boy’s rooms, where 
he rummaged. 

^ Presently he came out and found me leaving 


Thrown Away 19 

cards on the Mess. There was no one else in 
the ante-room. 

He said : “ The Boy has gone out shooting. 
Does a man shoot tetur with a revolver and a 
writing-case ! ” 

I said : “ Nonsense, Major ! ” for I saw what 
was in his mind. 

He said : “ Nonsense or no nonsense, I’m 
going to the Canal now — at once. I don’t feel 
easy.” 

Then he thought for a minute and said : “ Can 
you lie ? ” 

“ You know best,” I answered. “ It’s my pro- 
fession.” 

“Very well,” said the Major; “you must 
come out with me now — at once — in an ekka to 
the Canal to shoot black-buck. Go and put on 
shikar- kit — quick — and drive here with a 
gun.” 

The Major was a masterful man ; and I knew 
that he would not give orders for nothing. So 
I obeyed, and on return found the Major packed 
up in an ekka — gun-cases and food slung below 
— all ready for a shooting-trip. 

He dismissed the driver and drove himself. 
We jogged along quietly while in the station ; 
but as soon as we got to the dusty road across 
the plains, he made that pony fly. A country- 
bred can do nearly anything at a pinch. We 
covered the thirty miles in under three hours, 
but the poor brute was nearly dead. 

Once I said : — “ What’s the blazing hurry, 
Major ? ” 

He said, quietly : “ The Boy has been alone, 
by himself for — one, two, five, — fourteen hours 
now ! I tell you, I don’t feel easy.” 


20 


Thrown Away 

This uneasiness spread itself to me, and I i 
helped to beat the pony. 

When we came to the Canal Engineer’s Rest 
House the Major called for The Boy’s servant ; 
but there was no answer. Then we went up to 
the house, calling for The Boy by name ; but 
there was no answer. 

“ Oh, he’s out shooting,” said I. 

Just then, I saw through one of the windows 
a little hurricane-lamp burning. This was at 
four in the afternoon. We both stopped dead in 
the veranda, holding our breath to catch every f 
sound ; and we heard, inside the room, the “ brr : 
— brr — brr ” of a multitude of flies. The Major 
said nothing, but he took off his helmet and we 
entered very softly. 

The Boy was dead on the charpoy in the 
center of the bare, lime-washed room. He had 
shot his head nearly to pieces with his revolver. 
The gun-cases were still strapped, so was the 
bedding, and on the table lay The Boy’s writing- j 
case with photographs. He had gone away to ! 
die like a poisoned rat ! 

The Major said to himself softly: — “Poor 
Boy ! Poor, poor devil ! ” Then he turned 
away from the bed and said : — “ I want your 
help in this business.” 

Knowing The Boy was dead by his own hand, 

I saw exactly what that help would be, so I passed 
over to the table, took a chair, lit a cheroot, and 
began to go through the writing-case ; the Major 
looking over my shoulder and repeating to him- 
self : “We came too late ! — Like a rat in a hole ! 
— Poor, poor devil ! ” 

The Boy must have spent half the night in 
writing to his people, to his Colonel, and to a 


21 


Thrown Away 

girl at Home ; and as soon as he had finished, 
must have shot himself, for he had been dead a 
long time when we came in. 

1 read all that he had written, and passed over 
each sheet to the Major as I finished it. 

We saw from his accounts how very seriously 
he had taken everything. He wrote about “ dis- 
grace which he was unable to bear ” — “ indelible 
shame ” — “ criminal folly ” — “ wasted life,” and 
so on ; besides a lot of private things to his 
Father and Mother much too sacred to put into 
print. The letter to the girl at Home was the 
most pitiful of all ; and I choked as I read it. 
The Major made no attempt to keep dry-eyed. 
I respected him for that. He read and rocked 
himself to and fro, and simply cried like a woman 
without caring to hide it. The letters were so 
dreary and hopeless and touching. We forgot 
all about The Boy’s follies, and only thought of 
the poor Thing on the charpoy and the scrawled 
sheets in our hands. It was utterly impossible 
to let the letters go Home. They would have 
broken his father’s heart and killed his Mother 
after killing her belief in her son. 

At last the Major dried his eyes openly, and 
said : — “ Nice sort of thing to spring on an Eng- 
lish family ! What shall we do ? ” 

I said, knowing what the Major had brought 
me out for: — “ The Boy died of cholera. We 
were with him at the time. We can’t commit 
ourselves to half-measures. Come along.” 

Then began one of the most grimly comic 
scenes I have ever taken part in — the concoction 
of a big, written lie, bolstered with evidence, to 
soothe The Boy’s people at Home. I began the 
rough draft of the letter, the Major throwing in 


22 Plain Tales From the Hills 


hints here and there while he gathered up all the 
stuff that The Boy had written and burnt it in 
the fireplace. It was a hot, still evening when 
we began, and the lamp burned very badly. In 
due course I got the draft to my satisfaction, 
setting forth how The Boy was the pattern of all 
virtues, beloved by his regiment, with every 
promise of a great career before him, and soon ; 
how we had helped him through the sickness — 
it was no time for little lies you will understand 
— and how he had died without pain. I choked 
while I was putting down these things and think- 
ing of the poor people who would read them. 
Then I laughed at the grotesqueness of the affair, 
and the laughter mixed itself up with the choke 
— and the Major said that we both wanted 
drinks. 

I am afraid to say how much whisky we drank 
before the letter was finished. It had not the 
least effect on us. Then we took off The Boy’s 
watch, locket, and rings. 

Lastly, the Major said : — “ We must send a 
lock of hair too. A woman values that.” 

But there were reasons why we could not find 
a lock fit to send. The Boy was black-haired, 
and so was the Major, luckily. I cut off a piece 
of the Major’s hair above the temple with a 
knife, and put it into the packet we were making. 
The laughing-fit and the chokes got hold of me 
again, and I had to stop. The Major was nearly 
as bad ; and we both knew that the worst part 
of the work was to come. 

We sealed up the packet, photographs, locket, 
seals, ring, letter, and lock of hair with The 
Boy’s sealing-wax and The Boy’s seal. 

Then the Major said: — “For God’s sake 


Thrown Away 23 

let’s get outside — away from the room — and 
think ! ” 

We went outside, and walked on the banks of 
the Canal for an hour, eating and drinking what 
we had with us, until the moon rose. I know now 
exactly how a murderer feels. Finally, we forced 
ourselves back to the room with the lamp and the 
Other Thing in it, and began to take up the next 
piece of work. I am not going to write about 
this. It was too horrible. We burned the bed- 
stead and dropped the ashes into the Canal ; we 
took up the matting of the room and treated that 
in the same way. I went off to a village and 
borrowed two big hoes, — I did not want the 

villagers to help, — while the Major arranged 

the other matters. It took us four hours’ hard 
work to make the grave. As we worked, we 
argued out whether it was right to say as much 
as we remembered of the Burial of the Dead. 
We compromised things by saying the Lord’s 
Prayer with a private unofficial prayer for the 
peace of the soul of The Boy. Then we filled 
in the grave and went into the veranda — not 
the houses — to lie down to sleep. We were 
dead-tired. 

When we woke the Major said, wearily : — “ We 
can’t go back till to-morrow. We must give him 
a decent time to die in. He died early this 
morning, remember. That seems more natural.” 
So the Major must have been lying awake all the 
time, thinking. 

I said : “ Then why didn’t we bring the body 
back to cantonments ? ” 

The Major thought for a minute : — “ Because 
the people bolted when they heard of the cholera. 
And the ekka has gone ! ” 


24 Plain Tales From the Hills 

That was strictly true. We had forgotten all 
about the ekka- pony, and he had gone home. 

So we were left there alone, all that stifling 
day, in the Canal Rest House, testing and re-test- 
ing our story of The Boy’s death to see if it was 
weak in any point. A native turned up in the 
afternoon, but we said that a Sahib was dead 
of cholera, and he ran away. As the dusk 
gathered, the Major told me all his fears about 
The Boy, and awful stories of suicide or nearly- 
carried-out suicide — tales that made one’s hair 
crisp. He said that he himself had once gone 
into the same Valley of the Shadow as The Boy, 
when he was young and new to the country ; so 
he understood how things fought together in 
The Boy’s poor jumbled head. He also said 
that youngsters, in their repentant moments, 
consider their sins much more serious and in- 
effaceable than they really are. We talked to- 
gether all through the evening and rehearsed 
the story of the death of The Boy. As soon as 
the moon was up, and The Boy, theoretically, 
just buried, we struck across country for the 
Station. We walked from eight till six o’clock 
in the morning ; but though we were dead-tired, 
we did not forget to go to The Boy’s rooms and 
put away his revolver with the proper amount 
of cartridges in the pouch. Also to set his 
writing-case on the table. We found the Colo- 
nel and reported the death, feeling more like 
murderers than ever. Then we went to bed and 
slept the clock round ; for there was no more 
in us. 

The tale had credence as long as was neces- 
sary, for every one forgot about The Boy before 
a fortnight was over. Many people, however, 


25 


Thrown Away 

found time to say that the Major had behaved 
scandalously in not bringing in the body for a 
regimental funeral. The saddest thing of all 
was the letter from The Boy’s mother to the 
Major and me — with big inky blisters all over 
the sheet. She wrote the sweetest possible 
things about our great kindness, and the obliga- 
tion she would be under to us as long as she 
lived. 

Ail things considered, she was under an obli- 
gation ; but not exactly as she meant. 


MISS YOUGHAL’S SAIS. 


When Man and Woman are agreed, what can the Kazi do? 

Mahomedan Proverb. 

Some people say that there is no romance in 
India. Those people are wrong. Our lives 
hold quite as much romance as is good for us. 
Sometimes more. 

Strickland was in the Police, and people did 
not understand him, so they said he was a doubt- 
ful sort of a man and passed by on the other 
side. Strickland had himself to thank for this. 
He held the extraordinary theory that a police- 
man in India should try to know as much about 
the natives as the natives themselves. Now, in 
the whole of Upper India, there is only one 
man who can pass for Hindu or Mahomedan, 
chamar or faquir , as he pleases. He is feared 
and respected by the natives from the Ghor 
Kathri to the Jamma Musjid ; and he is supposed 
to have the gift of invisibility and executive con- 
trol over many Devils. But what good has this 
done him with the Government ? None in the 
world. He has never got Simla for his charge ; 
and his name is almost unknown to English- 
men. 

Strickland was foolish enough to take that 
man for his model ; and, following out his 
absurd theory, dabbled in unsavory places no 
respectable man would think of exploring — all 
26 


Miss Youghal’s Sais 27 

among the native riff-raff. He educated himself 
in this peculiar way for seven years, and people 
could not appreciate it. He was perpetually 
“ going Fantee” among natives, which, of 
course, no man with any sense believes in. 
He was initiated into the Sat Bhai at Allahabad 
once, when he was on leave ; he knew the 
Lizard-Song of the Sansis, and the Hdlli-Hukk 
dance, which is a religious can-can of a startling 
kind. When a man knows who dance the Hdlli- 
Hukk , and how, and when,. and where, he knows 
something to be proud of. He has gone deeper 
than the skin. But Strickland was not proud, 
though he had helped once, at Jagadhri, at the 
Painting of the Death Bull, which no English- 
man must even look upon ; had mastered the 
thieves’-patter of the changars ; had taken a 
Eusufzai horse-thief alone near Attock ; and had 
stood under the mimbar - board of a Border 
mosque and conducted services in the manner 
of a Sunni Mollah. 

His crowning achievement was spending eleven 
days as a faquir in the gardens of Baba Atal at 
Amritsar, and there picking up the threads 
of the great Nasiban Murder Case. But people 
said, justly enough : — “ Why on earth can’t 
Strickland sit in his office and write up his diary, 
and recruit, and keep quiet, instead of show- 
ing up the incapacity of his seniors ?” So the 
Nasiban Murder Case did him no good depart- 
mentally ; but, after his first feeling ofwrath, he 
returned to his outlandish custom of prying 
into native life. By the way when a man once 
acquires a taste for this particular amusement, it 
abides with him all his days. It is the most fas- 
cinating thing in the world ; Love not excepted. 


28 Plain Tales From the Hills 


Where other men took ten days to the Hills, 
Strickland took leave for what he called shikar , 
put on the disguise that appealed to him at the 
time, stepped down into the brown crowd, and 
was swallowed up for a while. He was a quiet, 
dark young fellow — spare, black-eyed — and, 
when he was not thinking of something else, a 
very interesting companion. Strickland on Na- 
tive Progress as he had seen it was worth hear- 
ing. Natives hated Strickland ; but they were 
afraid of him. He knew too much. 

When the Youghals came into the station, 
Strickland — very gravely, as he did everything — 
fell in love with Miss Youghai ; and she, after a 
while, fell in love with him because she could 
not understand him. Then Strickland told the 
parents ; but Mrs. Youghai said she was not go- 
ing to throw her daughter into the worst paid 
Department in the Empire, and old Youghai 
said, in so many words, that he mistrusted Strick- 
land’s ways and works, and would thank him not 
speak or write to his daughter any more. “ Very 
well,’ 1 said Strickland, for he did not wish to 
make his lady-love’s life a burden. After one 
long talk with Miss Youghai he dropped the 
business entirely. 

The Youghals went up to Simla in April. 

In July, Strickland secured three months’ 
leave on “ urgent private affairs.” He locked 
up his house — though not a native in the Prov- 
ince would wittingly have touched “ Estreekin 
Sahib’s ” gear for the world — and went down to 
see a friend of his, an old dyer, at Tarn Taran. 

Here all trace of him was lost, until a sais 
met me on the Simla Mall with this extraordinary 
note : — 


29 


Miss Youghal’s Sais 

“ Dear old man , 

Please give bearer a box 
of cheeroots — Supers , No. i, for preference. 
They are freshest at the Club. Til repay when 
I reappear j but at present I'm out of Society. 

Yours , 

E. Strickland.” 

I ordered two boxes, and handed them over to 
the sais with my love. That sais was Strick- 
land, and he was in old Youghal’s employ, at- 
tached to Miss Youghal’s Arab. The poor 
fellow was suffering for an English smoke, and 
knew that whatever happened I should hold my 
tongue till the business was over. 

Later on, Mrs. Youghal, who was wrapped up 
in her servants, began talking at houses where 
she called of her paragon among saises — the 
man who was never too busy to get up in the 
morning and pick flowers for the breakfast-table, 
and who blacked — actually blacked — the hoofs 
of his horse like a London coachman ! The 
turnout of Miss Youghal’s Arab was a wonder 
and a delight. Strickland — Dulloo, I mean, 
found his reward in the pretty things that Miss 
Youghal said to him when she went out riding. 
Her parents were pleased to find she had forgot- 
ten all her foolishness for young Strickland and 
said she was a good girl. 

Strickland vows that the two months of his 
service were the most rigid mental discipline he 
has ever gone through. Quite apart from the 
little fact that the wife of one of his fellow-j^/j^i’ 
fell in love with him and then tried to poison 
him with arsenic because he would have nothing 
to do with her, he had to school himself into 


30 Plain Tales From the Hills 

keeping quiet when Miss Youghal went out riding 
with some man who tried to flirt with her, and 
he was forced to trot behind carrying the blanket 
and hearing every word ! Also, he had to keep 
his temper when he was slanged in “ Benmore ” 
porch by a policeman — especially once when 
he was abused by a Naik he had himself 
recruited from Isser Jang village — or, worse 
still, when a young subaltern called him a pig 
for not making way quickly enough. 

But the life had its compensations. He ob- 
tained great insight into the ways and thefts of 
saises — enough he says to have summarily con- 
victed half the ehamar population of the Punjab 
if he had been on business. He became one of 
the leading players at knuckle-bones, which all 
jhampdnis and many saises play while they are 
waiting outside the Government House or the 
Gaiety Theatre of nights ; he learned to smoke 
tobacco that was three-fourths cowdung ; and 
he heard the wisdom of the grizzled Jemadar of 
the Government House saises. Whose words 
are valuable. He saw many things which 
amused him ; and he states, on honor, that no 
man can appreciate Simla properly, till he has 
seen it from the saiss point of view. He also 
says that, if he chose to write all he saw, his 
head would be broken in several places. 

Strickland’s account of the agony he endured 
on wet nights, hearing the music and seeing the 
lights in “ Benmore,” with his toes tingling for a 
waltz and his head in a horse-blanket, is rather 
amusing. One of these days, Strickland is going 
to write a little book on his experiences. That 
book will be worth buying ; and even more 
worth suppressing. 


Miss Youghal’s Sais 31 

Thus, he served faithfully as Jacob served for 
Rachel ; and his leave was nearly at an end when 
the explosion came. He had really done his 
best to keep his temper in the hearing of the flir- 
tations I have mentioned ; but he broke down at 
last. An old and very distinguished General 
took Miss Youghal for a ride, and began that 
specially offensive “ you’re-only-a-little-girl ” sort 
of flirtation — most difficult for a woman to turn 
aside deftly, and most maddening to listen to. 
Miss Youghal was shaking with fear at the things 
he said in the hearing of her sais. Dulloo — 
Strickland — stood it as long as he could. Then 
he caught hold of the General’s bridle, and, in 
most fluent English, invited him to step off and 
be heaved over the cliff. Next minute, Miss 
Youghal began crying ; and Strickland saw that 
he had hopelessly given himself away, and every- 
thing was over. 

The General nearly had a fit, while Miss 
Youghal was sobbing out the story of the dis- 
guise and the engagement that wasn’t recognized 
by the parents. Strickland was furiously angry 
with himself and more angry with the General 
for forcing his hand : so he said nothing, but 
held the horse’s head and prepared to thrash 
the General as some sort of satisfaction, but 
when the General had thoroughly grasped the 
story, and knew who Strickland was, he began 
to puff and blow in the saddle, and nearly rolled 
off with laughing. He said Strickland deserved 
a V. C., if it were only for putting on a sais’s 
blanket. Then he called himself names, and 
vowed that he deserved a thrashing, but he was 
too old to take it from Strickland. Then he 
complimented Miss Youghal on her lover. The 


32 Plain Tales From the Hills 

scandal of the business never struck him ; for he 
was a nice old man, with a weakness for flirta- 
tions. Then he laughed again, and said that 
old Youghal was a fool. Strickland let go of 
the cob’s head, and suggested that the General 
had better help them, it that was his opinion. 
Strickland knew Youghal’s weakness for men 
with titles and letters after their names and high 
official position. “ It’s rather like a forty-minute 
farce,” said the General, “but, begad, I will 
help, if it’s only to escape that tremendous 
thrashing I deserved. Go along to your home, 
my jaz^-Policeman, and change into decent kit, 
and I’ll attack Mr. Youghal. Miss Youghal, 
may I ask you to canter home and wait ? ” 

About seven minutes later, there was a wild 
hurroosh at the Club. A sazs, with blanket and 
head-rope, was asking all the men he knew : 
“ For Heaven’s sake lend me decent clothes ! ” 
As the men did not recognize him, there were 
some peculiar scenes before Strickland could 
get a hot bath, with soda in it, in one room, a 
shirt here, a collar there, a pair of trousers else- 
where, and so on. He galloped off with half 
the Club wardrobe on his back, and an utter 
stranger’s pony under him, to the house of old 
Youghal. The General, arrayed in purple and 
fine linen, was before him. What the General 
had said Strickland never knew, but Youghal 
received Strickland with moderate civility ; and 
Mrs. Youghal, touched by the devotion of the 
transformed Dulloo, was almost kind. The Gen- 
eral beamed and chuckled, and Miss Youghal 
came in, and, almost before old Youghal knew 
where he was, the parental consent had been 


33 


Miss Youghal’s Sais 

wrenched out, and Strickland had departed with 
Miss Youghal to the Telegraph Office to wire 
for his kit. The final embarrassment was when 
an utter stranger attacked him on the Mall and 
asked for the stolen pony, 

So, in the end, Strickland and Miss Youghal 
were married, on the strict understanding that 
Strickland should drop his old ways, and stick 
to Departmental routine which pays best and 
leads to Simla. Strickland was far too fond of 
his wife, just then, to break his word, but it was 
a sore trial to him ; for the streets and the 
bazars, and the sounds in them, were full of 
meaning to Strickland, and these called to him 
to come back and take up his wanderings and 
his discoveries. Some day, I will tell you how 
he broke his promise to help a friend. That 
was long since, and he has, by this time, been 
nearly spoilt for what he would call shikar. He 
is forgetting the slang, and the beggar’s cant, 
and the marks, and the signs, and the drift of 
the undercurrents, which, if a man would mas- 
ter, he must always continue to learn. 

But he fills in his Departmental returns beau- 
tifully. 

3 


# 


“ YOKED WITH AN UNBELIEVER.” 


I am dying for you, and you are dying for another. 

Punjabi Proverb. 

When the Gravesend tender left the P. & O. 
steamer for Bombay and went back to catch the 
train to Town, there were many people in it cry- 
ing. But the one who wept most, and most openly, 
was Miss Agnes Laiter. She had reason to cry, 
because the only man she ever loved — or ever 
could love, so she said — was going out to India ; 
and India, as every one knows, is divided equally 
between jungle, tigers, cobras, cholera, and 
sepoys. 

Phil Garron, leaning over the side of the 
steamer in the rain, felt very unhappy too, but he 
did not cry. He was sent out to “ tea.” What 
“ tea ” meant he had not the vaguest idea, but 
fancied that he would have to ride on a prancing 
horse over hills covered with tea-vines, and draw 
a sumptuous salary for doing so ; and he was 
very grateful to his uncle for getting him the 
berth. He was really going to reform all his 
slack, shiftless ways, save a large proportion of 
his magnificent salary yearly, and, in a very 
short time, return to marry Agnes Laiter. Phil 
Garron had been lying loose on his friends’ 
hands for three years, and, as he had nothing to 
do, he naturally fell in love. He was very nice ; 
but he was not strong in his views and opinions 
and principles, and though he never came to 

34 


“ Yoked With An Unbeliever” 35 


actual grief his friends were thankful when he 
said good-by, and went out to this mysterious 
“ tea ” business near Darjiling. They said : — 
“ God bless you, dear boy ! Let us never see 
your face again,” — or at least that was what 
Phil was given to understand. 

When he sailed, he was very full of a great 
plan to prove himself several hundred times 
better than any one had given him credit for — 
to work like a horse, and triumphantly marry 
Agnes Laiter. He had many good points besides 
his good looks ; his only fault being that he was 
weak, the least little bit in the world weak. He 
had as much notion of economy as the Morning 
Sun ; and yet you could not lay your hand on 
any one item, and say : — “ Herein PhilGarron is 
extravagant or reckless.” Nor could you point 
out any particular vice in his character : but he 
was “ unsatisfactory ” and as workable as putty. 

Agnes Laiter went about her duties at home 
— her family objected to the engagement — with 
red eyes, while Phil was sailing to Darjiling — 
“ a port on the Bengal Ocean,” as his mother 
used to tell her friends. He was popular enough 
on board ship, made many acquaintances and a 
moderately large liquor bill, and sent off huge 
letters to Agnes Laiter at each port. Then he 
fell to work on this plantation, somewhere be- 
tween Darjiling and Kangra, and, though the 
salary and the horse and the work were not 
quite all he had fancied, he succeeded fairly 
well, and gave himself much unnecessary credit 
for his perseverance. 

In the course of time, as he settled more into 
collar, and his work grew fixed before him, the 
face of Agnes Laiter went out of his mind and 


36 Plain Tales From the Hills 

only came when he was at leisure, which was 
not often. He would forget all about her for a 
fortnight, and remember her with a start, like a 
school-boy who has forgotten to learn his lesson. 
She did not forget Phil, because she was of the 
kind that never forgets. Only, another man — 
a really desirable young man — presented himself 
before Mrs. Laiter ; and the chance of a mar- 
riage with Phil was as far off as ever ; and his 
letters were so unsatisfactory ; and there was a 
certain amount of domestic pressure brought to 
bear on the girl ; and the young man really was 
an eligible person as incomes go ; and the end of 
all things was that Agnes married him, and wrote 
a tempestuous whirlwind of a letter to Phil in the 
wilds of Darjiling, and said she should never 
know a happy moment all the rest of her life. 
Which was a true prophecy. 

Phil got that letter, and held himself ill-treated. 
This was two years after he had come out ; but 
by dint of thinking fixedly of Agnes Laiter, and 
looking at her photograph, and patting himself 
on the back for being one of the most constant 
lovers in history, and warming to the work as he 
went on, he really fancied that he had been very 
hardly used. He sat down and wrote one final 
letter — a really pathetic “ world without end, 
amen,” — epistle ; explaining how he would be 
true to Eternity, and that all women were very 
much alike, and he would hide his broken heart, 
etc., etc. ; but if, at any future time, etc., etc., he 
could afford to wait, etc., etc., unchanged affec- 
tions, etc., etc., return to her old love, etc., etc., 
for eight closely-written pages. F rom an artistic 
point of view, it was very neat work, but an 
ordinary Philistine, who knew the state of Phil’s 


“Yoked With An Unbeliever” 37 


real feelings — not the ones he rose to as he went 
on writing — would have called it the thoroughly 
mean and selfish work of a thoroughly mean and 
selfish, weak man. But this verdict would have 
been incorrect. Phil paid for the postage, and 
felt every word he had written for at least two 
days and a half. It was the last flicker before 
the light went out. 

That letter made Agnes Laiter very unhappy, 
and she cried and put it away in her desk, and 
became Mrs. Somebody Else for the good of her 
family. Which is the first duty of every Chris- 
tian maid. 

Phil went his ways, and thought no more of 
his letter, except as an artist thinks of a neatly 
touched-in sketch. His ways were not bad, but 
they were not altogether good, until they brought 
him across Dunmaya, the daughter of a Rajput 
ex-Subadar-Major of our Native Army. The 
girl had a strain of Hill blood in her, and, like 
the Hill-women, was not a purdah nashin. 
Where Phil met her, or how he heard of her, 
does not matter. She was a good girl and hand- 
some, and, in her way, very clever and shrewd ; 
though, of course, a little hard. It is to be re- 
membered that Phil was living very comfortably, 
denying himself no small luxury, never putting 
by an anna, very satisfied with himself and his 
good intentions, was dropping all his English 
correspondents one by one, and beginning more 
and more to look upon this land as his home. 
Some men fall this way ; and they are of no use 
afterwards. The climate where he was stationed 
was good, and it really did not seem to him that 
there was anything to go Home for. 

He did what many planters have done be- 


38 Plain Tales From the Hills 

fore him — that is to say, he made up his mind 
to marry a Hill-girl and settle down. He was 
seven and twenty then, with a long life before 
him, but no spirit to go through with it. So he 
married Dunmaya by the forms of the English 
Church, and some fellow-planters said he was a 
fool, and some said he was a wise man. Dun- 
maya was a thoroughly honest girl, and, in spite 
of her reverence for an Englishman, had a rea- 
sonable estimate of her husband’s weaknesses. 
She managed him tenderly, and became, in less 
than a year, a very passable imitation of an Eng- 
lish lady in dress and carriage. [It is curious 
to think that a Hill-man, after a life-time’s educa- 
tion is a Hill-man still ; but a Hill-woman can in 
six months master most of the ways of her Eng- 
lish sisters. There was a coolie-woman once. 
But that is another story.] Dunmaya dressed 
by preference in black and yellow, and looked 
well. 

Meantime the letter lay in Agnes’s desk, and 
now and again she would think of poor, resolute, 
hard-working Phil among the cobras and tigers 
of Darjiling, toiling in the vain hope that she 
might come back to him. Her husband was 
worth ten Phils, except that he had rheumatisn 
of the heart. Three years after he was married, 
— and after he had tried Nice and Algeria for 
his complaint — he went to Bombay, where he 
died, and set Agnes free. Being a devout 
woman, she looked on his death and the place 
of it, as a direct interposition of Providence, and 
when she had recovered Jrom the shock, she 
took out and re-read Phil’s letter with the “ etc., 
etc.,” and the big dashes, and the little dashes, 
and kissed it several times. No one knew her 


“Yoked With An Unbeliever” 39 


in Bombay ; she had her husband’s income, 
which was a large one, and Phil was close at 
hand. It was wrong and improper, of course, 
but she decided, as heroines do in novels, to find 
her old lover, to offer him her hand and her gold, 
and with him spend the rest of her life in some 
spot far from unsympathetic souls. She sat for 
two months, alone in Watson’s Hotel, elaborat- 
ing this decision, and the picture was a pretty one. 
Then she set out in search of Phil Garron, Assist- 
ant on a tea plantation with a more than usually 
unpronounceable name. 

She found him. She spent a month over it, 
for his plantation was not in the Darjiling district 
at all, but nearer Kangra. Phil was very little 
altered, and Dunmaya was very nice to her. 

Now the particular sin and shame of the 
whole business is that Phil, who really is not 
worth thinking of twice, was and is loved by 
Dunmaya, and more than loved by Agnes, the 
whole of whose life he seems to have spoilt. 

Worst of all, Dunmaya is making a decent 
man of him ; and he will be ultimately saved 
from perdition through her training. 

Which is manifestly unfair. 


FALSE DAWN. 


To-night God knows what thing shall tide, 

The Earth is racked and faint — 

Expectant, sleepless, open -eyed ; 

And we, who from the Earth were made, 

Thrill with our Mother’s pain. 

In Durance. 

No man will ever know the exact truth of this 
story ; though women may sometimes whisper 
it to one another alter a dance, when they are 
putting up their hair for the night and compar- 
ing lists of victims. A man, of course, cannot 
assist at these functions. So the tale must be 
told from the outside — in the dark — all wrong. 

Never praise a sister to a sister, in the hope of 
your compliments reaching the proper ears, and 
so preparing the way for you later on. Sisters 
are women first, and sisters afterwards ; and you 
will find that you do yourself harm. 

Saumarez knew this when he made up his 
mind to propose to the elder Miss Copleigh. 
Saumarez was a strange man, with few merits, 
so far as men could see, though he was popular 
with women, and carried enough conceit to stock 
a Viceroy’s Council and leave a little over for the 
Commander-in-Chief’s Staff. He was a Civilian. 
Very many women took an interest in Saumarez, 
perhaps, because his manner to them was offen- 
sive. If you hit a pony over the nose at the out- 
set of your acquaintance, he may not love you, 
but he will take a deep interest in your move- 
ments ever afterwards. The elder Miss Copleigh 
40 


False Dawn 


4i 


was nice, plump, winning and pretty. The 
younger was not so pretty, and, from men disre- 
garding the hint set forth above, her style was 
repellant and unattractive. Both girls had, prac- 
tically, the same figure, and there was a strong 
likeness between them in look and voice ; though 
no one could doubt for an instant which was the 
nicer of the two. 

Saumarez made up his mind, as soon as they 
came into the station from Behar, to marry the 
elder one. At least, we all made sure that he 
would, which comes to the same thing. She 
was two and twenty, and he was thirty-three, 
with pay and allowances of nearly fourteen hun- 
dred rupees a month. So the match, as we ar- 
ranged it, was in every way a good one. Sau- 
marez was his name, and summary was his 
nature, as a man once said. Having drafted his 
Resolution, he formed a Select Committee of 
One to sit upon it, and resolved to take his time. 
In our unpleasant slang, the Copleigh girls 
“ hunted in couples.” That is to say, you could 
do nothing with one without the other. They 
were very loving sisters ; but their mutual affec- 
tion was sometimes inconvenient. Saumarez 
held the balance-hair true between them, and 
none but himself could have said to which side 
his heart inclined ; though every one guessed. 
He rode with them a good deal and danced with 
them, but he never succeeded in detaching them 
from each other for any length of time. 

Women said that the two girls kept together 
through deep mistrust, each fearing that the 
other would steal a march on her. But that has 
nothing to do with a man. Saumarez was silent 
for good or bad, and as business-like attentive 


42 Plain Tales From the Hills 

as he could be, having due regard to his work 
and his polo. Beyond doubt both girls were 
fond of him. 

As the hot weather drew nearer and Saumarez 
made no sign, women said that you could see 
their trouble in the eyes of the girls — that they 
were looking strained, anxious, and irritable. 
Men are quite blind in these matters unless they 
have more of the woman than the man in their 
composition, in which case it does not matter, 
what they say or think. I maintain it was the 
hot April days that took the color out of the 
Copleigh girls' cheeks. They should have been 
sent to the Hills early. No one — man or woman 
— feels an angel when the hot weather is ap- 
proaching. The younger sister grew more cyn- 
ical — not to say acid — in her ways ; and the 
winningness of the elder wore thin. There was 
more effort in it. 

Now the Station wherein all these things hap- 
pened was, though not a little one, off the line 
of rail, and suffered through want of attention. 
There were no gardens, or bands or amusements 
worth speaking of, and it was nearly a day’s 
journey to come into Lahore for a dance. Peo- 
ple were grateful for. small things to interest 
them. 

About the beginning of May, and just before 
the final exodus of Hill-goers, when the weather 
was very hot and there were not more than 
twenty people in the Station, Saumarez gave a 
moonlight riding-picnic at an old tomb, six miles 
away, near the bed of the river. It was a 
“ Noah’s Ark ” picnic ; and there was to be the 
usual arrangement of quarter-mile intervals be- 
tween each couple, on account of the dust. Six 


False Dawn 


43 

couples came altogether, including chaperones. 
Moonlight picnics are useful just at the very end 
of the season, before all the girls go away to the 
Hills. They lead to understandings, and should 
be encouraged by chaperones ; especially those 
whose girls look sweetest in riding habits. I 
knew a case once. But that is another story. 
That picnic was called the “ Great Pop Picnic,” 
because every one knew Saumarez would pro- 
pose then to the eldest Miss Copleigh ; and, be- 
sides his affair, there was another which might 
possibly come to happiness. The social atmos- 
phere was heavily charged and wanted clearing. 

We met at the parade-ground at ten : the 
night was fearfully hot. The horses sweated 
even at walking-pace, but anything was better 
than sitting still in our own dark houses. When 
we moved off under the full moon we were four 
couples, one triplet, and Mr. Saumarez rode 
with the Copleigh girls, and I loitered at the tail 
of the procession wondering with whom Sau- 
marez would ride home. Every one was happy 
and contented ; but we all felt that things were 
going to happen. We rode slowly ; and it was 
nearly midnight before we reached the old tomb, 
facing the ruined tank, in the decayed gardens 
where we were going to eat and drink. I was 
late in coming up ; and, before I went in to the 
garden, I saw that the horizon to the north car- 
ried a faint, dun-colored feather. But no one 
would have thanked me for spoiling so well- 
managed an entertainment as this picnic — and 
a dust-storm, more or less, does no great harm. 

We gathered by the tank. Some one had 
brought out a banjo — which is a most senti- 
mental instrument — and three or four of us 


44 Plain Tales From the Hills 

sang. You must not laugh at this. Our amuse- 
ments in out-of-the-way Stations are very few 
indeed. Then we talked in groups or together, 
lying under the trees, with the sun-baked roses 
dropping their petals on our feet, until supper 
was ready. It was a beautiful supper, as cold 
and as iced as you could wish ; and we stayed 
long over it. 

I had felt that the air was growing hotter and 
hotter ; but nobody seemed to notice it until the 
moon went out and a burning hot wind began 
lashing the orange-trees with a sound like the 
noise of the sea. Before we knew where we 
were, the dust-storm was on us, and everything 
was roaring, whirling darkness. The supper- 
table was blown bodily into the tank. We were 
afraid of staying anywhere near the old tomb for 
fear it might be blown down. So we felt our 
way to the orange-trees where the horses were 
picketed and waited for the storm to blow over. 
Then the little light that was left vanished, and 
you could not see your hand before your face. 
The air was heavy with dust and sand from the 
bed of the river, that filled boots and pockets 
and drifted down necks and coated eyebrows 
and moustaches. It was one of the worst dust- 
storms of the year. We were all huddled to- 
gether close to the trembling horses, with the 
thunder clattering overhead, and the lightning 
spurting like water from a sluice, all ways at 
once. There was no danger, of course, unless 
the horses broke loose. I was standing with my 
head downwind and my hands over my mouth, 
hearing the trees thrashing each other. I could 
not see who was next me till the flashes came. 
Then I found that I was packed near Saumarez 


False Dawn 


45 

and the eldest Miss Copleigh, with my own horse 
just in front of me. I recognized the eldest Miss 
Copleigh, because she had a pagri round her 
helmet, and the younger had not. All the elec- 
tricity in the air had gone into my body and I 
was quivering and tingling from head to foot — 
exactly as a corn shoots and tingles before rain. 
It was a grand storm. The wind seemed to be 
picking up the earth and pitching it to leeward 
in great heaps ; and the heat beat up the ground 
like the heat of the Day of Judgment. 

The storm lulled slightly after the first half- 
hour, and I heard a despairing little voice close 
to my ear, saying to itself, quietly and softly, as 
if some lost soul were flying about with the 
wind : — “ Oh my God ! ” Then the younger 
Miss Copleigh stumbled into my arms, saying : 
“ Where is my horse ? Get my horse. I want 
to go home. I want to go home. Take me 
home.” 

I thought that the lightning and the black 
darkness had frightened her ; so I said there was 
no danger, but she must wait till the storm blew 
over. She answered: “It is not that! It is 
not that / I want to go home ! Oh take me 
away from here ! ” 

I said that she could not go till the light came ; 
but I felt her brush past me and go away. It 
was too dark to see where. Then the whole 
sky was split open with one tremendous flash, 
as if the end of the world were coming, and all 
the women shrieked. 

Almost directly after this, I felt a man’s hand 
on my shoulder and heard Saumarez bellowing 
in my ear. Through the rattling of the trees 
and howling of the wind, I did not catch his 


46 Plain Tales From the Hills 

words at once, but at last I heard him say : — 
“ I’ve proposed to the wrong one ! What shall 
I do ? ” Saumarez had no occasion to make this 
confidence to me. I was never a triend of his, 
nor am I now ; but I fancy neither of us were 
ourselves just then. He was shaking as he stood 
with excitement, and I was feeling queer all over 
with the electricity. I could not think of any- 
thing to say except : — “ More fool you for pro- 
posing in a dust storm.” But I did not see how 
that would improve the mistake. 

Then he shouted : — “ Where’s Edith — Edith 
Copleigh ? ” Edith was the younger sister. I 
answered out ol my astonishment : — “ What do 
you want with her?" Would you believe it, 
for the next two minutes, he and I were shout- 
ing at each other like maniacs, — he vowing that 
it was the younger sister he had meant to pro- 
pose to all along, and I telling him till my throat 
was hoarse that he must have made a mistake ! 
I can’t account for this except, again, by the 
fact that we were neither of us ourselves. Every- 
thing seemed to me like a bad dream — from the 
stamping of the horses in the darkness to Sau- 
marez telling me the story of his loving Edith 
Gopleigh since the first. He was still clawing 
my shoulder and begging me to tell him where 
Edith Copleigh was, when another lull came and 
brought light with it, and we saw the dust-cloud 
forming on the plain in front of us. So we knew 
the worst was over. The moon was low down, 
and there was just the glimmer of the false dawn 
that comes about an hour before the real one. 
But the light was very faint, and the dun cloud 
roared like a bull. I wondered where Edith 
Copleigh had gone ; and as I was wondering I 


False Dawn 


47 

saw three things together : First, Maud Copleigh’s 
face come smiling out of the darkness and move 
towards Saumarez who was standing by me. I 
heard the girl whisper: — “George,” and slide 
her arm through the arm that was not clawing 
my shoulder, and I saw that look on her face 
which only comes once or twice in a lifetime — 
when a woman is perfectly happy and the air is 
full of trumpets and gorgeous-colored tire and 
the Earth turns into cloud because she loves and 
is loved. At the same time, I saw Saumarez’s 
face as he heard Maud Copleigh’s voice, and 
fifty yards away from the clump of orange-trees, 
I saw a brown holland habit getting upon a 
horse. 

It must have been my state of over-excitement 
that made me so quick to meddle with what did 
not concern me. Saumarez was moving off to 
the habit ; but I pushed him back and said : — - 
“ Stop here and explain. I’ll fetch her back ! ” 
And I ran out to get at my own horse. I had a 
perfectly unnecessary notion that everything 
must be done decently and in order, and that 
Saumarez’s first care was to wipe the happy look 
out of Maud Copleigh’s face. All the time I was 
linking up the curb-chain I wondered how he 
would do it. 

I cantered after Edith Copleigh, thinking to 
bring her back slowly on some pretence or 
another. But she galloped away as soon as she 
saw me, and I was forced to ride after her in 
earnest. She called back over her shoulder — “ Go 
away ! I’m going home. Oh, go away /” two 
or three times ; but my business was to catch 
her first, and argue later. The ride just fitted in 
with the rest of the evil dream. The ground 


48 Plain Tales From the Hills 

was very bad, and now and again we rushed 
through the whirling, choking “ dust-devils ” in 
the skirts of the flying storm. There was a 
burning hot wind blowing that brought up a 
stench of stale brick-kilns with it ; and through 
the half light and through the dust-devils, across 
that desolate plain, flickered the brown holland 
habit on the gray horse. She headed for the 
Station at first. Then she wheeled round and 
set off for the river through beds of burnt down 
jungle-grass, bad even to ride pig over. In cold 
blood I should never have dreamed of goingover 
such a country at night, but is seemed quite 
right and natural with the lightning crackling 
over head, and a reek like the smell of the Pit 
in my nostrils. I rode and shouted, and she bent 
forward and lashed her horse, and the aftermath 
of the dust-storm came up and caught us both, 
and drove us downwind like pieces of paper. 

I don’t know how far we rode ; but the drum- 
ming of the horse-hoofs and the roar of the 
wind and the race of the faint blood-red moon 
through the yellow mist seemed to have gone on 
for years and years, and I was literally drenched 
with sweat from my helmet to my gaiters when 
the gray stumbled, recovered himself, and pulled 
up dead lame. My brute was used up alto- 
gether. Edith Copleigh was in a sad state, 
plastered with dust, her helmet off, and crying 
bitterly. “ Why can’t you let me alone?” she 
said. “ I only wanted to get away and go home, 
Oh, please let me go 1 ” 

“You have got to come back with me, Miss 
Copleigh, Saumarez has something to say to 
you.” 

It was a foolish way of putting it ; but I hardly 


False Dawn 


49 


knew Miss Copleigh, and, though I was playing 
Providence at the cost of my horse, I could not 
tell her in as many words what Saumarez had 
told me. I thought he could do that better 
himself. All her pretense about being tired and 
wanting to go home broke down, and she rocked 
herself to and fro in the saddle as she sobbed, 
and the hot wind blew her black hair to leeward. 
I am not going to repeat what she said, because 
she was utterly unstrung. 

This, if you please, was the cynical Miss Cop- 
leigh. Here was I, almost an utter stranger to 
her, trying to tell her that Saumarez loved her 
and she was to come back to hear him say so ? 
I believe I made myself understood, for she 
gathered the gray together and made him hobble 
somehow, and we set off for the tomb, while the 
storm went thundering down to Umballa and a 
few big drops of warm rain fell. I found out 
that she had been standing close to Saumarez 
when he proposed to her sister, and had wanted 
to go home to cry in peace, as an English girl 
should. She dabbed her eyes with her pocket- 
handkerchief as we went along, and babbled to 
me out of sheer lightness of heart and hysteria. 
That was perfectly unnatural ; and yet, it seemed 
all right at the time and in the place. All the 
world was only the two Copleigh girls, Saumarez 
and I, ringed in with the lightning and the 
dark ; and the guidance of this misguided world 
seemed to lie in my hands. 

When we returned to the tomb in the deep, 
dead stillness that followed the storm, the dawn 
was just breaking and nobody had gone away. 
They were waiting for our return. Saumarez 
most of all. His face was white and drawn. 

4 


50 Plain Tales From the Hills 

As Miss Copleigh and I limped up, he came for- 
ward to meet us, and, when he helped her down 
from her saddle, he kissed her before all the 
picnic. It was like a scene in a theater, and the 
likeness was heightened by all the dust-white, 
ghostly looking men and women under the 
orange-trees, clapping their hands — as if they 
were watching a play — at Saumarez’s choice. I 
never knew anything so un-English in my life. 

Lastly, Saumarez said we must all go home or 
the Station would come out to look for us, and 
would I be good enough to ride home with Maud 
Copleigh ? Nothing would give me greater 
pleasure, I said. 

So, we formed up, six couples in all. and went 
back two by two ; Saumarez walking at the side 
ot Edith Copleigh, who was riding his horse. 

The air was cleared ; and little by little, as the 
sun rose, I felt we were all dropping back again 
into ordinary men and women and that the 
“ Great Pop Picnic ” was a thing altogether apart 
and out of the world — never to happen again. 
It had gone with the dust storm and the tingle in 
the hot air. 

I felt tired and limp, and a good deal ashamed 
of myself, as I went in for a bath and some sleep. 

There is a woman’s version of this story, but 
it will never be written .... unless Maud Cop- 
leigh cares to try. 


THE RESCUE OF PLUFFLES. 


Thus, for a season, they fought it fair, — 

She and his cousin May — 

Tactful, talented, debonaire. 

Decorous foes were they ; 

But never can battle of man compare 
With merciless feminine fray. 

Two and One. 

Mrs. Hauksbee was sometimes nice to her 
sex. Here is a story to prove this ; and you can 
believe just as much as ever you please. 

Pluffles was a subaltern in the “ Unmention- 
ables.” He was callow, even for a subaltern. 
He was callow all over — like a canary that had 
not finished fledging itself. The worst ol it was 
he had three times as much money as was good 
for him ; Pluffles’ Papa being a rich man and 
Pluffles being the only son, Pluffles’ Mama 
adored him. She was only a little less callow 
than Pluffles and she believed everything he said. 

Pluffles’ weakness was not believing what peo- 
ple said. He preferred what he called “ trust- 
ing to his own judgment.” He had as much 
judgment as he had seat or hands ; and this 
preference tumbled him into trouble once or 
twice. But the biggest trouble Pluffles ever 
manufactured came about at Simla — some years 
ago, when he was four-and-twenty. 

He began by trusting to his own judgment, as 
usual, and the result was that, after a time, he 
was bound hand and foot to Mrs. Reiver’s ’rick- 
shaw wheels. 


51 


52 Plain Tales From the Hills 

There was nothing good about Mrs. Reiver, 
unless it was her dress. She was bad from her 
hair — which started life on a Brittany girl’s head 
— to her boot-heels which were two and three- 
eighth inches high. She was not honestly mis- 
chievous like Mrs. Hauksbee ; she was wicked 
in a business-like way. 

There was never any scandal — she had not N 
generous impulses enough for that. She was I 
the exception which proved the rule that Anglo- | 
Indian ladies are in every way as nice as their i 
sisters at Home. She spent her life in proving 
that rule. 

Mrs. Hauksbee and she hated each other fer- 
vently. They heard far too much to clash ; but 
the things they said of each other were startling — I 
not to say original. Mrs. Hauksbee was honest — 
honest as her own front teeth — and, but for her 
love of mischief, would have been a woman’s 
woman. There was no honesty about Mrs. 
Reiver ; nothing but selfishness. And at the 
beginning of the season, poor little Pluffles fell 
a prey to her. She laid herself out to that end, 
and who was Pluffles to resist? He went on 
trusting to his judgment, and he got judged. 

I have seen Hayes argue with a tough horse — 

I have seen a tonga-driver coerce a stubborn 
pony — I have seen a riotous setter broken to gun 
by a hard keeper — but the breaking-in of Pluffles 
of the “ Unmentionables ” was beyond all these. 
He learned to fetch and carry like a dog, and to 
wait like one, too, for a word from Mrs. Reiver. 
He learned to keep appointments which Mrs. 
Reiver had no intention of keeping. He learned 
to take thankfully dances which Mrs. Reiver had 
no intention of giving him. He learned to shiver 


The Rescue of Pluffles 53 

I for an hour and a quarter on the windward side 
of Elysium while Mrs. Reiver was making up 
i her mind to come for a ride. He learned to 
hunt for a 'rickshaw, in a light dress-suit under 
| pelting rain, and to walk by the side of that ’rick- 
j shaw when he had found it. He learned what 
I it was to be spoken to like a coolie and ordered 
about like a cook. He learned all this and many 
ji other things besides. And he paid for his 
| schooling. 

Perhaps, in some hazy way, he fancied that it 
| was fine and impressive, that it gave him a status 
among men, and was altogether the thing to do. 
It was nobody’s business to warn Pluffles that 
he was unwise. The pace that season was 
too good to inquire ; and meddling with 
another man’s folly is always thankless work. 
Pluffles’ Colonel should have ordered him back 
to his regiment when he heard how things were 
going. But Pluffles had got himself engaged to 
a girl in England the last time he went Home ; 
and if there was one thing more than another 
which the Colonel detested, it was a married 
| subaltern. He chuckled when he heard of the 
education of Pluffles, and said it was “ good 
training for the boy.” But it was not good 
training in the least. It led him to spending 
money beyond his means, which were good : 
above that, the education spoilt the average boy 
and made it a tenth-rate man of an objectionable 
kind. He wandered into a bad set, and his 
little bill at Hamilton’s was a thing to wonder 
at. 

Then Mrs. Hauksbee rose to the occasion. 
She played her game alone, knowing what peo- 
ple would say of her ; and she played it for the 


54 Plain Tales From the Hills 

sake of a girl she had never seen. Pluffles’ 
fiancee was to come out, under the chaperonage 
of an aunt, in October, to be married to Pluffles. 

At the beginning of August, Mrs. Hauksbee 
discovered that it was time to interfere. A man 
who rides much knows exactly what a horse is 
going to do next before he does it. In the same 
way, a woman of Mrs. Hauksbee’s experience 
knows accurately how a boy will behave under 
certain circumstances — notably when he is infat- 
uated with one of Mrs. Reiver’s stamp. She said 
that, sooner or later, little Pluffles would break off 
that engagement for nothing at all — simply to 
gratify Mrs. Reiver, who, in return, would keep 
him at her feet and in her service just so long as 
she found it worth her while. She said she 
knew the signs of these things. If she did not, 
no one else could. 

Then she went forth to capture Pluffles under 
the guns of the enemy ; just as Mrs. Cusack- 
Bremmil carried away Bremmil under Mrs. 
Hauksbee’s eyes. 

This particular engagement lasted seven 
weeks — we called it the Seven Weeks’ War — and 
was fought out inch by inch on both sides. A 
detailed account would fill a book, and would be 
incomplete then. Any one who knows about 
these things can fit in the details for himself. It 
was a superb fight — there will never be another 
like it as long as Jakko stands — and Pluffles was 
the prize of victory. People said shameful things 
about Mrs. Hauksbee. They did not know what 
she was playing for. Mrs. Reiver fought, partly 
because Pluffles was useful to her, but mainly 
because she hated Mrs. Hauksbee, and the matter 
was a trial of strength between them. No one 


The Rescue of Pluffles 55 

knows what Pluffles thought. He had not many 
ideas at the best of times, and the few he possessed 
made him conceited. Mrs. Hauksbee said : — 
“ The boy must be caught ; and the only way of 
catching him is by treating him well.” 

So she treated him as a man ol the world and 
of experience so long as the issue was doubtful. 
Little by little Pluffles fell away from his old 
allegiance and came over to the enemy, by whom 
he was made much of. He was never sent on out- 
post duty after 'rickshaws any more, nor was he 
given dances which never came off, nor were the 
drains on his purse continued. Mrs. Hauksbee 
held him on the snaffle ; and, after his treat- 
ment at Mrs. Reiver’s hands, he appreciated the 
change. 

Mrs. Reiver had broken him of talking about 
himself, and made him talk about her own merits. 
Mrs. Hauksbee acted otherwise, and won his 
confidence, till he mentioned his engagement to 
the girl at Home, speaking of it in a high and 
mighty way as a “ piece of boyish folly.” This 
was when he was taking tea with her one after- 
noon, and discoursing in what he considered a 
gay and fascinating style. Mrs. Hauksbee had 
seen an earlier generation of his stamp bud and 
blossom, and decay into fat Captains and tubby 
Majors. 

At a moderate estimate there were about three 
and twenty sides to that lady’s character. Some 
men say more. She began to talk to Pluffles 
alter the manner ofa mother, and as if there had 
been three hundred years, instead of fifteen, be- 
tween them. She spoke with a sort of throaty 
quaver in her voice which had a soothing effect, 
though what she said was anything but soothing. 


56 Plain Tales From the Hills 

She pointed out the exceeding folly, not to say 
meanness, of Pluffles’ conduct, and the smallness 
of his views. Then he stammered something 
about “ trusting to his own judgment as a man 
of the world ; ” and this paved the way for what 
she wanted to say next. It would have withered 
up Pluffles had it come from any other woman ; 
but in the soft cooing style in which Mrs. Hauks- 
bee put it, it only made him feel limp and repent- 
ant — as if he had been in some superior kind of 
church. Little by little, very softly and pleas- 
antly, she began taking the conceit out of Pluffles, 
as you take the ribs out of an umbrella before 
re-covering it. She told him what she thought 
of him and his judgment and his knowledge of 
the world ; and how his performances had made 
him ridiculous to other people ; and how it was 
his intention to make love to herself if she gave 
him the chance. Then she said that marriage 
would be the making of him ; and drew a pretty 
little picture — all rose and opal — of the Mrs. 
Pluffles of the future going through life relying 
on the “judgment” and “knowledge of the 
world ” of a husband who had nothing to re- 
proach himself with. How she reconciled these 
two statements she alone knew. But they did 
not strike Pluffles as conflicting. 

Hers was a perfect little homily — much better 
than any clergyman could have given — and it 
ended with touching allusions to Pluffles’ Ma- 
ma and Papa, and the wisdom of taking his bride 
Home. 

Then she sent Pluffles out for a walk, to think 
over what she had said. Pluffles left, blowing 
his nose very hard and hplding himself very 
straight. Mrs. Hauksbee laughed. 


The Rescue of Pluffles 57 

What Pluffles had intended to do in the matter 
of the engagement only Mrs. Reiver knew, and 
she kept her own counsel to her death. She 
would have liked it spoiled as a compliment, I 
fancy. 

Pluffles enjoyed many talks with Mrs. Hauks- 
bee during the next few days. They were all 
to the same end, and they helped Pluffles in the 
path of Virtue. 

Mrs. Hauksbee wanted to keep him under her 
wing to the last. Therefore she discountenanced 
his going down to Bombay to get married. 
“ Goodness only knows what might happen by 
the way ! ” she said. “ Pluffles is cursed with 
the curse of Reuben, and India is no fit place 
for him ! ” 

In the end, the fiancee arrived with her aunt ; 
and Pluffles, having reduced his affairs to some 
sort of order — here again Mrs. Hauksbee helped 
him — was married. 

Mrs. Hauksbee gave a sigh of relief when 
both the “ I wills ” had been said, and went her 
way. 

Pluffles took her advice about going Home. 
He left the Service, and is now raising speckled 
cattle inside green painted fences somewhere at 
Home. I believe he does this very judiciously. 
He would have come to extreme grief out here. 

For these reasons if any one says anything 
more than usually nasty about Mrs. Hauksbee 
tell him the story of the Rescue of Pluffles. 


CUPID’S ARROWS. 


Pit where the buffalo cooled his hide, 

By the hot sun emptied, and blistered and dried; 
Log in the r^-grass, hidden and lone ; 

Bund where the earth-rat’s mounds are strown ; 
Cave in the bank where the sly stream steals ; 

Aloe that stabs at the belly and heels, 

Jump if you dare on a steed untried — 

Safer it is to go wide — go wide ! 

Hark, from in front where the best men ride : 

“ Pull to the off, boys l Wide ! Go wide ! ” 

The Peora Hunt. 


Once upon a time there lived at Simla a very- 
pretty girl, the daughter of a poor but honest 
District and Sessions Judge. She was a good 
girl, but could not help knowing her power and 
using it. Her Mama was very anxious about 
her daughter’s future, as all good Mamas 
should be. 

When a man is a Commissioner and a bache- 
lor and has the right of wearing open-work jam- 
tart jewels in gold and enamel on his clothes, 
and of going through a door before every one 
except a Member of Council, a Lieutenant-Gov- 
ernor, or a Viceroy, he is worth marrying. At 
least, that is what ladies say. There was a Com- 
missioner in Simla, in those days, who was, and 
wore, and did, all I have said. He was a plain 
man — an ugly man — the ugliest man in Asia, 
with two exceptions. His was a face to dream 
about and try to carve on a pipe-head after- 
wards. His name was Saggott — Barr-Saggott — 
Anthony Barr-Saggott and six letters to follow. 
Departmentally, he was one of the best men the 


Cupid’s Arrows 59 

Government of India owned. Socially, he was 
like a blandishing gorilla. 

When he turned his attentions to Miss Beigh- 
ton, I believe that Mrs. Beighton wept with de- 
light at the reward Providence had sent her in 
her old age. 

Mr. Beighton held his tongue. He was an 
easy-going man. 

Now a Commissioner is very rich. His pay 
is beyond the dreams of avarice — is so enormous 
that he can afford to save and scrape in a way 
that would almost discredit a Member of Council. 
Most Commissioners are mean ; but Barr-Sag- 
gott was an exception. He entertained royally ; 
he horsed himself well ; he gave dances ; he 
was a power in the land ; and he behaved as 
such. 

Consider that everything I am writing of took 
place in an almost pre-historic era in the history 
of British India. Some folk may remember the 
years before lawn-tennis was born when we all 
played croquet. There were seasons before that, 
if you will believe me, when even croquet had 
not been invented, and archery — which was re- 
vived in England in 1 844 — was as great a pest as 
lawn-tennis is now. People talked learnedly 
about “ holding ” and “ loosing,” “ steles,” “ re- 
flexed bows,” “ 56-pound bows,” “ backed ” or 
“ self-yew bows,” as we talk about “ rallies,” 
“ volleys,” “ smashes,” “ returns,” and “ 16-ounce 
rackets.” 

Miss Beighton shot divinely over ladies’ dis- 
tance — 60 yards, that is — and was acknowledged 
the best lady archer in Simla. Men called her 
“ Diana of Tara-Devi.” 

Bar-Saggott paid her great attention ; and, as 


6o Plain Tales From the Hills 


I have said, the heart of her mother was uplifted 
in consequence. Kitty Beighton took matters 
more calmly. It was pleasant to be singled out 
by a Commissioner with letters after his name, 
and to fill the hearts of other girls with bad feel- 
ings. But there was no denying the fact that 
Barr-Saggott was phenomenally ugly ; and all 
his attempts to adorn himself only made him 
more grotesque. He was not christened “ The 
Langur ” — which means gray ape — for nothing. 
It was pleasant, Kitty thought, to have him at 
her feet, but it was better to escape from him 
and ride with the graceless Cubbon — the man in 
a Dragoon Regiment at Umballa — the boy with 
a handsome face, and no prospects. Kitty liked 
Cubbon more than a little. He never pretended 
for a moment that he was anything less than 
head over heels in love with her ; for he was an 
honest boy. So Kitty fled now and again, from 
the stately wooings of Barr-Saggott to the com- 
pany of young Cubbon, and was scolded by her 
Mama in consequence. “ But, Mother,” she 
said, “ Mr. Saggott is such — such a — is so fear- 
fully ugly, you know ! ” 

“ My dear,” said Mrs. Beighton piously, “ we 
cannot be other than an all-ruling Providence 
has made us. Besides, you will take precedence 
of your own Mother, you know ! Think of that 
and be reasonable.” 

Then Kitty put up her little chin and said ir- 
reverent things about precedence, and Commis- 
sioners, and matrimony. Mr. Beighton rubbed 
the top of his head ; for he was an easy-going 
man. 

Late in the season, when he judged that the 
time was ripe, Barr-Saggott developed a plan 


6i 


Cupid’s Arrows 

which did great credit to his administrative 
powers. He arranged an archery-tournament 
for ladies with a most sumptuous diamond- 
studded bracelet as prize. He drew up his terms 
skilfully, and every one saw that the bracelet was 
a gift to Miss Beighton ; the acceptance carrying 
with it the hand and the heart of Commissioner 
Barr-Saggott. The terms were a St. Leonard’s 
Round — thirty-six shots at sixty yards — under 
the rules of the Simla Toxophilite Society. 

All Simla was invited. There were beautifully 
arranged tea-tables under the deodars at Annan- 
dale, where the Grand Stand is now ; and, alone 
in its glory, winking in the sun, sat the diamond 
bracelet in a blue velvet case. Miss Beighton 
was anxious — almost too anxious — to compete. 
On the appointed afternoon, all Simla rode down 
to Annandale to witness the Judgment of Paris 
turned upside down. Kitty rode with young 
Cubbon, and it was easy to see that the boy was 
troubled in his mind. He must be held innocent 
of everything that followed. Kitty was pale and 
nervous, and looked long at the bracelet. Barr- 
Saggot was gorgeously dressed, even more nerv- 
ous than Kitty, and more hideous than ever. 

Mrs. Beighton smiled condescendingly, as be- 
fitted the mother of a potential Commissioneress, 
and the shooting began ; all the world standing 
a semicircle as the ladies came out one after the 
other. 

Nothing is so tedious as an archery competi- 
tion. They shot, and they shot, and they kept 
on shooting, till the sun left the valley, and little 
breezes got up in the deodars, and people waited 
for Miss Beighton to shoot and win. Cubbon 
was at one horn of the semicircle round the 


62 Plain Tales From the Hills 


shooters, and Barr-Saggot at the other. Miss 
Beighton was last on the list. The scoring had 
been weak, and the bracelet, plus Commissioner 
Barr-Saggott, was hers to a certainty. 

The Commissioner strung her bow with his 
own sacred hands. She stepped forward, looked 
at the bracelet, and her first arrow went true to 
a hair — full into the heart of the “ gold -count- 
ing nine points. 

Young Cubbon on the left turned white, and 
his Devi prompted Barr-Saggot to smile. Now 
horses used to shy when Barr-Saggot smiled. 
Kitty saw that smile. She looked to her left- 
front, gave an almost imperceptible nod to Cub- 
bon, and went on shooting. 

I wish I could describe the scene that fol- 
lowed. It was out of the ordinary and most im- 
proper. Miss Kitty fitted her arrows with 
immense deliberation, so that every one might 
see what she was doing. She was a perfect 
shot ; and her 46-pound bow suited her to a 
nicety. She pinned the wooden legs of the target 
with great care four successive times. She 
pinned the wooden top of the target once, and 
all the ladies looked at each other. Then she 
began some fancy shooting at the white, which if 
you hit it, counts exactly one point. She put 
five arrows into the white. It was wonderful 
archery ; but, seeing that her business was to 
make “golds” and win the bracelet, Barr-Sag- 
got turned a delicate green like young water- 
grass. Next, she shot over the target twice, 
then wide to the left twice — always with the 
same deliberation — while a chilly hush fell over 
the company, and Mrs. Beighton took out her 
handkerchief. Then Kitty shot at the ground in 


Cupids Arrows 63 

front of the target, and split several arrows. 
Then she made a red — or seven points — just to 
show what she could do if she liked, and she 
finished up her amazing performance with some 
more fancy shooting at the target supports. 
Here is her score as it was pricked off : — 

Gold. Red. Blue. Black. White. Total Hits. Total Score. 
Miss Beighton iipo 5 7 21 

Barr-Saggot looked as if the last few arrow- 
heads had been driven into his legs instead of 
the target’s, and the deep stillness was broken by 
a little snubby, mottled, half-grown girl saying in 
a shrill voice of triumph, — “ Then I've won ! ” 

Mrs. Beighton did her best to bear up ; but 
she wept in the presence of the people. No 
training could help her through such a disap- 
pointment. Kitty unstrung her bow with a 
vicious jerk, and went back to her place, while 
Barr-Saggott was trying to pretend that he en- 
joyed snapping the bracelet on the snubby girl’s 
raw, red wrist. It was an awkward scene — 
most awkward. Every one tried to depart in a 
body and leave Kitty to the mercy of her 
Mama. 

But Cubbon took her away instead, and — the 
rest isn’t worth printing. 


THE THREE MUSKETEERS. 


An’ when the war began, we chased the bold Afghan, 

An’ we made the bloomin’ Ghazi for to flee, boys O ! 

An’ we marched into Kabul , and we tuk the Balar ’Issar, 

An’ we taught ’em to respec’ the British Soldier. 

Barrack Room Ballad. 

Mulvaney, Ortheris and Learoyd are Privates 
in B Company of a Line Regiment, and personal 
friends of mine. Collectively I think , but am 
not certain, they are the worst men in the regi- 
ment so far as genial blackguardism goes. 

They told me this story, the other day, in the 
Umballa Refreshment Room while we were 
waiting for an up-train. I supplied the beer. 
The tale was cheap at a gallon and a half. 

Of course you know Lord Benira Trig. He 
is a Duke, or an Earl, or something unofficial ; 
also a Peer ; also a Globe-trotter! On all three 
counts, as Ortheris says, “ ’e didn’t deserve no 
consideration.” He was out here for three 
months collecting materials for a book on “ Our 
Eastern Impedimenta,” and quartering himself 
upon everybody, like a Cossack in evening-dress. 

His particular vice — because he was a Radical, 
I suppose — was having garrisons turned out for 
his inspection. He would then dine with the 
Officer Commanding, and insult him, across the 
Mess table, about the appearance of the troops. 
That was Benira’s way. 

He turned out troops once too often. He 
came to Helanthami Cantonment on a Tuesday. 
He wished to go shopping in the bazaars on 
64 


The Three Musketeers. 65 

Wednesday, and he “desired ’ the troops to be 
turned out on a Thursday. On — a — Thursday ! 
The Officer Commanding could not well refuse ; 
for Benira was a Lord. There was an indigna- 
tion-meeting of subalterns in the Mess Room, to 
call the Colonel pet names. 

“ But the rale dimonstrashin,” said Mulvaney, 
“was in B Comp’ny barrick ; we three headin’ 
it.” 

Mulvaney climbed on to the refreshment-bar, 
settled himself comfortably by the beer, and 
went on : — “ Whin the row was at ut’s foinest 
an’ B Comp’ny was fur goin’ out to murther this 
man Thrigg on the p’rade-groun’, Learoyd here 
takes up his helmut an’ sez — fwhat was ut ye 
said ? ” 

“ Ah said/ ’ said Learoyd, “ gie us t’ brass. 
Tak oop a subscripshun, lads, for to put off t’ 
p’rade, an’ if t’ p’rade’s not put off, ah'll gie t’ 
brass back agean. Thot’s wot ah said. All B 
Coomp’ny knawed me. Ah took oop a big sub- 
scripshun — fower rupees eight annas ’twas — an’ 
ah went oot to turn t’ job over. Mulvaney an* 
Orth’ris coom with me.” 

“We three raises the Divil in couples gin’r- 
ally,” explained Mulvaney. 

Here Otheris interrupted. “ ’Ave you read 
the papers ? ” said he. 

“Sometimes,” I said. 

“ We ’ad read the papers, an’ we put hup a 
faked decoity, a — a sedukshun.” 

“ v^dukshin, ye cockney,” said Mulvaney. 

“ y^dukshun or jvdukshun — no great odds. 
Any’ow, we arrange to taik an’ put Mister Ben- 
hira out o’ the way till Thursday was hover, or 
’e too busy to rux ’isselt about p’raids. Hi was 

7 


66 Plain Tales From the Hills 


the man wot said : ‘ We’ll make a few rupees 
off o’ the business.’ ” 

“ We hild a Council av War,” continued Mul- 
vaney “ walkin’ roun’ by the Artill’ry Lines. I 
was Prisidint, Learoyd was Minister av Finance, 
an’ little Orth’ris here was ” 

• A bloomin’ Bismarck ! Hi made the ’ole 
show pay.” “ This interferin’ bit av a Benira 
man,’ said Mulvaney, “ did the thrick for us 
himself ; for, on me sowl, we hadn’t a notion av 
what was to come afther the next minut. He 
was shoppin’ in the bazar on fut. ’Twas 
dhrawin’ dusk thin, an’ we stud watchin’ the 
little man hoppin’ in an’ out av the shops, thryin’ 
to injuce the naygurs to mallum his bat . Pris- 
intly, he sthrols up, his arrums full av thruck, 
an’ he sez in a consiquinshal way, shticking out 
his little belly : — ‘ Me good men,’ sez he, * have 
ye seen the Kernel’s b’roosh ? ’ • B’roosh ? ’ 

says Learoyd. ‘ There’s no b’roosh here — nob- 
but a hekka .’ ‘ Fwhat’s that?’ sez Thrigg 

Learoyd shows him wan down the sthreet, an’ 
he sez : — ‘ How thruly Orientil ! I will ride on 
a hekka' I saw thin that our Rigimintal Saint 
was for givin’ Thrigg over to us neck an’ brisket. 
I purshued a hekka , an’ I sez to the dhriver- 
divil, I sez — ‘Ye black limb, there’s a Sahib 
cornin’ for this hekka . He wants to go jildi to 
the Padsahi Jhil’ — ’twas about tu modes away, 
— to shoot snipe — chirria . * You dhrive Jehan- 

num ke marfik , mallum ? ’Tis no manner av 
/aider bukkin' to the Sahib , bekaze he doesn’t 
samjao your bal, Av he bolos anything, just 
you choop and chel. Dekkerf Go 'arsty for 
the first arder- mile from cantonmints. Then 
chel , Shaitan ke marfik , an’ the chooper you 


The Three Musketeers. 67 

choops an’ the jilder you chels the better kooshy 
will that Sahib be • an’ here’s a rupee for ye.’ 

“ The hekka- man knew there was somethin’ 
out av the common in the air. He grinned and 
sez : — ‘ Bote achee / I goin’ damn fast.’ I 
prayed that the Kernel’s b’roosh wudn’t arrive 
till me darlin’ Benira by the grace av God was 
undher weigh. The little man puts his thruck 
into the hekka an’ scuttles in like a fat guinea- 
pig ; niver offerin’ us the price of a dhrink for 
our services in helpin’ him home. « He’s off to 
the Padsahi jhil ,’ sez I to the others.” 

Ortheris took up the tale : — 

“Jist then, little Buldoo kim up, ’oo was the 
son of one of the Artillery Raises — ’e would ’av 
made a ’evinly newspaper-boy in London, bein’ 
sharp and fly to all manner o’ games. ’E 'ad bin 
watchin’ us puttin’ Mister Benhira into ’s tern-' 

I porary baroush, an’ ’e sez : — * What 'ave you 
been a doin’ of, Sahib ? ’ sez ’e. Learoyd ’e 
caught ’im by the ear an’ ’e sez — ” 

“ Ah says,” went on Learoyd : “ ‘ Young mon, 
that mon’s gooin’ to have’t goons out o’ Thurs- 
day — kul — an’ thot’s more work for you, young 
mon. Now, sitha, tak a tat an’ a lookri , an’ ride 
tha domdest to t’ Padsahi Jhil. Cotch thot there 
hekka, and tell t’ driver iv your lingo thot you’ve 
coom to tak’ his place. T’ Sahib doesn’t speak 
t’ bat, an’ he’s a little mon. Drive t’ hekka into 
t’ Padsahi Jhil into t’ watter. Leave t’ Sahib 
theer an’ roon hoam ; an here’s a rupee for tha.” 

Then Mulvaney and Ortheris spoke together 
in alternate fragments : Mulvaney leading [You 
must pick out the two speakers as best you can.] 
“ He was a knowin’ little divil was Bhuldoo, — 
’e sez bote achee an’ cuts — wid a wink in his oi — 


68 Plain Tales From the Hills 


but Hi sez there’s money to be made — an’ I 
want to see the end av the campaign — so Hi 
says we’ll double hout to the Padsahi Jhil — and 
save the little man from bein’ dacoited by the 
murtherin’ Bhuldoo — an’ turn hup like reskoors 
in a Ryle Victoria Theayter Melodrama — so we 
doubled for the jhil , an’ prisintly there was the 
divil of a hurroosh behind us an’ three bhoys on 
grasscuts’ tats come by, pounding along for the 
dear life — s’elp me Bob, hif Buldoo 'adn’t raised 
a regular harmy of decoits — to do the job in 
shtile. An’ we ran, an’ they ran, shplittin’ with 
laughin’, till we gets near the jhil — and ’ears 
sounds of distress floatin’ molloncally on the 
heavenin’ hair.” [Ortheris was growing poetical 
under the influence of the beer. The duet re- 
commenced • Mulvaney leading again.] 

" Thin we heard Bhuldoo, the dacoit, shoutin’ 
to the hekka man, an’ wan of the young divils 
brought his lakri down on the top avthe hekka - 
cover, an’ Benira Thrigg inside howled ‘ Murther 
an’ Death.’ Buldoo takes the reins and dhrives 
like mad for the jhil , havin’ dishpersed the hekka- 
dhriver — ’oo cum up to us an’ ’e sez, sezie : — 
‘ That Sahib's nigh gawbry with funk ! Wot 
devil’s work ’ave you led me into ? ’ ‘ Hall right,’ 
sez we, * you puckrow that there pony an’ come 
along. This Sahib's been decoited, an’ we’re 
going to resky ’im ! ’ Says the driver : * Decoits! 
Wot decoits ? That’s Buldoo the budmash .' — 
* Bhuldoo be shot ! ’ sez we. ‘ ’Tis a woild disso- 
lute Pathan frum the hills. There’s about eight 
av ’im coercin’ the Sahib. You remimber that 
an’ you’ll get another rupee ’ ! Then we heard 
the whop-whop-whop av the hekka turnin’ over, 
an’ a splash av water an’ the voice av Benira 


The Three Musketeers 69 

Thrigg callin’ upon God to forgive his sins — an’ 
Buldoo an’ ’is lriends squotterin’ in the water 
like boys in the Serpentine.” 

Here the Three Musketeers retired simultane- 
ously into the beer. 

“ Well ? What came next ? ” said L 

“ Fwhat nex’ ? ” answered Mulvaney, wiping 
his mouth. “ Wud you let three bould sodger- 
bhoys lave the ornamint av the House of Lords 
to be dhrowned an’ dacoited in a jhilf We 
formed line av quarther-column an’ we desinded 
upon the inimy. For the better part av tin min- 
utes you could not hear yerself spake. The tattoo 
was screamin’ in chune wid Benira Thrigg an’ 
Bhuldoo’s army, an’ the shticks was whistlin’ 
roun’ the hekka % an’ Orth’ris was beatin’ the 
hekka-cove.r wid his fistes, an’ Learoyd yellin’ : — 
4 Look out for their knives ! ’ an’ me cuttin’ into 
the dark, right an’ lef’, dishpersin’ arrmy corps 
av Pathans. Holy Mother av Moses ! ’twas more 
disp’rit than Ahmid Kheyl wid Maiwund thrown 
in. Afther a while Bhuldoo an’ his bhoys flees. 
Have ye iver seen a rale live Lord thryin’ to hide 
his nobility undher a fut an’ a half av brown jhil 
wather ? ’Tis the livin’ image av a bhisti's inns - 
sick with the shivers. It tuk toime to pershuade 
me frind Benira he was not disimbowilled ; an’ 
more toime to get out the hekka. The dhriver 
come up afther the battle, swearin’ he tuk a hand 
in repulsin’ the inimy. Benira was sick wid the 
fear. We escorted him back, very slow, to can- 
tonmints, for that an’ the chill to soak into him. 
It suk ! Glory be to the Rigimintil Saint, but it 
suk to the marrow av Lord Benira Thrigg ! ” 
Here Ortheris, slowly, with immense pride : 


70 Plain Tales From the Hills 

— “ ’E sez : — ‘You har my noble preservers,’ 
sez ’e. ‘ You har a ^onor to the British Harmy,’ 
sez ’e. With that ’e describes the hawful band of 
decoits wot set on ’im. There was about forty 
of ’em an’ ’e was hoverpowered by numbers, 
so ’e was ; but ’e never lost ’is presence of mind, 
so ’e didn’t. ’E guv the hekka - driver five rupees 
for 'is noble hassistance, an’ ’e said ’e would see 
to us after ’e ’ad spoken to the Kernul. For we 
was a honor to the Regiment, we was.” 

“ An’ we three,” said Mulvaney, with a ser- 
aphic smile, “ have dhrawn the par-ti-cu-lar at- 
tinshin av Bobs Bahadur more than wanst. But 
he’s a rale good little man is Bobs. Go on, 
Orth’ris, me son.” 

“ Then we leaves ’im at the Kernul’s ’ouse, 
werry sick, an’ we cuts over to B Comp’ny bar- 
rick an’ we sez we ’ave saved Benira from a 
bloody doom, an’ the chances was agin there 
bein’ p’raid on Thursday. About ten minutes 
later come three envelicks, one for each of us. 
S’elp me Bob, if the old bloke ’adn’t guv us a 
fiver apiece — sixty-four dibs in the bazar ! On 
Thursday ’e was in 'orspital recoverin’ from ’s 
sanguinary encounter with a gang of Pathans, 
an’ B Comp’ny was drinkin’ ’emselves inter clink 
by squads. So there never was no Thursday 
p’raid. But the Kernul, when ’e ’eard of our 
galliant conduct, ’e sez : — Hi know there’s been 
some devilry somewheres,’ sez ’e, ‘but hi can’t 
bring it ’ome to you three.’ ” 

“ An’ my privit imprisshin is,” said Mulvaney, 
getting off the bar and turning his glass upside 
down, “ that, av they had known they wudn’t 
have brought ut home. ’Tis flyin’ in the face, 
firstly av Nature, second, av the Rig’lations, an’ 


The Three Musketeers 71 

third, the will av Terence Mulvaney, to hold 
p’rades av Thursdays.” 

“ Good, ma son ! ” said Learoyd ; “ but, young 
mon, what’s t’ notebook for ? ” 

“ Let be,” said Mulvaney ; “ this time next 
month we’re in the Sherapis. ’Tis immortial 
fame the gentleman’s goin’ to give us. But kape 
it dhark till we’re out av the range av me little 
frind Bobs Bahadur.” 

And I have obeyed Mulvaney’s order. 


HIS CHANCE IN LIFE. 


Then a pile of heads he laid— 

Thirty thousand heaped on high — 

All to please the Kafir maid, 

Where the Oxus ripples by. 

Grimly spake Atulla Khan 
“ Love hath made this thing a Man.” 

Oatta's Story. 

If you go straight away from Levies and 
Government House Lists, past Trades’ Balls — 
far beyond everything and everybody you ever 
knew in your respectable life — you cross, in time, 
the Borderline where the last drop of White 
blood ends and the full tide of Black sets in. It 
would be easier to talk to a new made Duchess 
on the spur of the moment than to the Border- 
line folk without violating some of their conven- 
tions or hurting their feelings. The Black and 
the White mix very quaintly in their ways. 
Sometimes the White shows in spurts of fierce, 
childish pride — which is Pride of Race run 
crooked — and sometimes the Black in still fiercer 
abasement and humility, half-heathenish customs 
and strange, unaccountable impulses to crime. 
One of these days, this people — understand they 
are far lower than the class whence Derozio, the 
man who imitated Byron, sprung — will turn out 
a writer or a poet ; and then we shall know how 
they live and what they feel. In the meantime, 
any stories about them cannot be absolutely cor- 
rect in fact or inference. 

Miss Vezzis came from across the Borderline 
to look after some children who belonged to a 
lady until a regularly ordained nurse could come 
72 


His Chance in Life 73 

out. The lady said Miss Vezzis was a ba , dirty 
nurse and inattentive. It never struck her that 
Miss Vezzis had her own life to lead and her 
own affairs to worry over, and that these affairs 
were the most important things in the world to 
Miss Vezzis. Very few mistresses admit this 
sort of reasoning. Miss Vezzis was as black as 
a boot and, to our standard of taste, hideously 
ugly. She wore cotton-print gowns and bulged 
shoes ; and when she lost her temper with the 
children, she abused them in the language of the 
Borderline — which is part English, part Portu- 
guese, and part Native. She was not attractive ; 
but she had her pride, and she preferred being 
called “ Miss Vezzis.” 

Every Sunday, she dressed herself wonderfully 
and went to see her Mama, who lived, for the 
most part, on an old cane chair in a greasy 
tussur-s\\\z dressing-gown and a big rabbit-war- 
ren ofa house full ofVezzises, Pereiras, Ribieras, 
Lisboas and Gonsalveses, and a floating popula- 
tion of loafers ; besides fragments of the day’s 
bazar , garlic, stale incense, clothes thrown on 
the floor, petticoats hung on strings for screens, 
old bottles, pewter crucifixes, dried immortelles , 
pariah puppies, plaster images of the Virgin, 
and hats without crowns. Miss Vezzis drew 
twenty rupees a month for acting as nurse, and 
she squabbled weekly with her Mama as to the 
percentage to be given towards housekeeping. 
When the quarrel was over, Michele D’Cruze 
used to shamble across the low mud wall of the 
compound and make love to Miss Vezzis after the 
fashion of the Borderline, which is hedged about 
with much ceremony. Michele was a poor, 
j sickly weed and very black ; but he had his 


74 Plain Tales From the Hills 

pride. He would not be seen smoking a huqa 
for anything ; and he looked down on natives as 
only a man with seven-eighths native blood in 
his veins can. The Vezzis Family had their 
pride too. They traced their descent from a 
mythical plate-layer who had worked ontheSone 
Bridge when railways were new in India, and 
they valued their English origin. Michele was a 
Telegraph Signaler on Rs. 35 a month. The fact 
that he was in Government employ made Mrs. 
Vezzis lenient to the shortcomings of his ancestors. 

There was a compromising legend — Dom 
Anna the tailor brought it from Poonani — that 
a black Jew of Cochin had once married into 
the D’Cruze family ; while it was an open secret 
that an uncle of Mrs. D’Cruze was, at that very 
time, doing menial work, connected with cook- 
ing for a Club in Southern India ! He sent Mrs. 
D’Cruze seven rupees eight annas a month ; but 
she felt the disgrace to the family very keenly all 
the same. 

However, in the course of a few Sundays, Mrs. 
Vezzis brought herself to overlook these blem- 
ishes and gave her consent to the marriage of 
her daughter with Michele, on condition that 
Michele should have at least fifty rupees a month 
to start married life upon. This wonderful pru- 
dence must have been a lingering touch of 
the mythical plate-layer’s Yorkshire blood ; for 
across the Borderline people take a pride in 
marrying when they please — not when they can. 

Having regard to his departmental prospects, 
Miss Vezzis might as well have asked Michele to 
go away and come back with the Moon in his 
pocket. But Michele was deeply in love with 
Miss Vezzis, and that helped him to endure. He 


His Chance in Life 75 

accompanied Miss Vezzis to Mass one Sunday, 
and after Mass, walking home through the hot 
stale dust with her hand in his, he swore by sev- 
eral Saints whose names would not interest you, 
never to forget Miss Vezzis ; and she swore by 
her Honor and the Saints — the oath runs rather 
curiously ; “ In nomine Sanctis simce — ” (what- 
ever the name of the she-Saint is) and so forth, 
ending with a kiss on the forehead, a kiss on the 
left cheek, and a kiss on the mouth — never to 
! forget Michele. 

Next week Michele was transferred, and Miss 
Vezzis dropped tears upon the window-sash of 
the “ Intermediate ” compartment as he left the 
j Station. 

If you look at the telegraph-map of India you 
| will see a long line skirting the coast from Back- 
ergunge to Madras. Michele was ordered to 
| Tibasu, a little Sub-office one-third down this 
- line, to send messages on from Berhampur to 
’ Chicacola, and to think of Miss Vezzis and his 
! chances of getting fifty rupees a month out of 
i office-hours. He had the noise of the Bay of 
Bengal and a Bengali Babu for company ; 

1 nothing more. He sent foolish letters, with 
crosses tucked inside the flaps of the envelopes, 
to Miss Vezzis. 

When he had been at Tibasu for nearly three 
weeks his chance came. 

Never forget that unless the outward and visi- 
ble signs of Our Authority are always before a 
native he is as incapable as a child of understand- 
ing what authority means, or where is the dan- 
ger of disobeying it. Tibasu was a forgotten 
little place with a few Orissa Mahomedans in it 
These, hearing nothing of the Collector -Sahit 


76 Plain Tales From the Hills 

for some time and heartily despising the Hindu 
Sub-Judge, arranged to start a little Mohurrum 
riot of their own. But the Hindus turned out 
and broke their heads ; when, finding lawless- 
ness pleasant, Hindus and Mahomedans togeth- 
er raised an aimless sort of Donnybrook just to 
see how far they could go. They looted each 
others’ shops, and paid off private grudges in the 
regular way. It was a nasty little riot, but not 
worth putting in the newspapers. 

Michele was working in his office when he 
heard the sound that a man never forgets all 
his life — the “ ah-yah ” of an angry crowd. 
[When that sound drops about three tones, and 
changes to a thick, droning ut, the man who 
hears it had better go away if he is alone.] The 
Native Police Inspector ran in and told Michele 
that the town was in an uproar and coming to 
wreck the Telegraph Office. The Babu put on 
his cap and quietly dropped out of the window ; 
while the Police Inspector, afraid, but obeying 
the old race-instinct which recognizes a drop of 
White blood as far as it can be diluted, said : — 
“ What orders does the Sahib give ? ” 

The “ Sahib ” decided Michele. Though 
horribly frightened, he felt that, for the hour, 
he, the man with the Cochin Jew and the menial 
uncle in his pedigree, was the only representa- 
tive of English authority in the place. Then he 
thought of Miss Vezzis and the fifty rupees, and 
took the situation on himself. There were 
seven native policemen in Tibasu, and four crazy 
smooth-bore muskets among them. All the men 
were gray with fear, but not beyond leading. 
Michele dropped the key of the telegraph instru- 
ment, and went out, at the head of his army, to 


His Chance in Life 


77 


meet the mob. As the shouting crew came 
round a corner of the road, he dropped and 
fired ; the men behind him loosing instinctively 
at the same time, 

The whole crowd — curs to the back-bone — 
yelled and ran ; leaving one man dead, and 
another dying in the road. Michele was sweat- 
ing with fear ; but he kept his weakness under, 
and went down into the town, past the house 
where the Sub-Judge had barricaded himself. 
The streets were empty. Tibasu was more 
frightened than Michele, for the mob had been 
taken at the right time. 

Michele returned to the Telegraph-Office, and 
sent a message to Chicacola asking for help. 
Before an answer came, he received a deputa- 
tion of the elders of Tibasu, telling him that the 
Sub-Judge said his actions generally were “un- 
constitutional,” and trying to bully him. But 
the heart of Michele D’Cruze was big and white 
in his breast, because of his love for Miss Vezzis, 
the nurse-girl, and because he had tasted for the 
first time Responsibility and Success. Those 
two make an intoxicating drink, and have ruined 
more men than ever has Whisky. Michele an- 
swered that the Sub-Judge might say what he 
pleased, but, until the Assistant Collector came, 
the Telegraph Signaler was the Government of 
India in Tibasu, and the elders of the town would 
be held accountable for further rioting. Then 
they bowed their heads and said: — “Show 
mercy ! ” or words to that effect, and went back 
in great fear ; each accusing the other of having 
begun the rioting. 

Early in the dawn, after a night’s patrol with 
his seven policemen, Michele went down the 


78 Plain Tales From the Hills 

road, musket in hand, to meet the Assistant Col- 
lector who had ridden in to quell Tibasu. But, 
in the presence of this young Englishman, 
Michele felt himself slipping back more and more 
into the native, and the tale of the Tibasu Riots 
ended, with the strain on the teller, in an hys- 
terical outburst of tears, bred by sorrow that he 
had killed a man, shame that he could not feel 
as uplifted as he had felt through the night, and 
childish anger that his tongue could not do 
justice to his great deeds. It was the White 
drop in Michele’s veins dying out, though he 
did not know it. 

But the Englishman understood ; and, after 
he had schooled those men of Tibasu, and had 
conferred with the Sub-Judge till that excellent 
official turned green, he found time to draught 
an official letter describing the conduct of 
Michele. Which letter filtered through the 
Proper Channels, and ended in the transfer of 
Michele up-country once more, on the Imperial 
salary of sixty-six rupees a month. 

So he and Miss Vezzis were married with 
great state and ancientry ; and now there are 
several little D’Cruzes sprawling about the ver- 
andas of the Central Telegraph Office. 

But, if the whole revenue of the Department 
he serves were to be his reward, Michele could 
never, never repeat what he did at Tibasu for 
the sake of Miss Vezzis the nurse-girl. 

Which proves that, when a man does good 
work out of all proportion to his pay, in seven 
cases out of nine there is a woman at the back 
of the virtue. 

The two exceptions must have suffered from 
sun stroke. 


WATCHES OF THE NIGHT. 


What is in the Brahmin’s books that is in the Brahmin’s heart. 
Neither you nor I knew there was so much evil in the world. 

Hindu Proverb . 


This began in a practical joke ; but it has 
gone far enough now, and is getting serious. 

Platte, the Subaltern, being poor, had a Water- 
bury watch and a plain leather guard. 

The Colonel had a Waterbury watch also, and 
for guard, the lip-strap of a curb-chain. Lip- 
straps make the best watch guards. They are 
strong and short. Between a lip-strap and an 
ordinary leather guard there is no great differ- 
ence ; between one Waterbury watch and 
another none at all. Everyone in the station 
knew the Colonel’s lip-strap. He was not a 
horsey man, but he liked people to believe he 
had been one once ; and he wove fantastic stories 
of the hunting-bridle to which this particular lip- 
strap had belonged. Otherwise he was pain- 
fully religious. 

Platte and the Colonel were dressing at the 
Club — both late for their engagements, and both 
in a hurry. That was Kismet . The two watches 
were on a shelf below the looking-glass — guards 
hanging down. That was carelessness. Platte 
changed first, snatched a watch, looked in the 
glass, settled his tie, and ran. Forty seconds 
later, the Colonel did exactly the same thing, 
each man taking the other’s watch. 

You may have noticed that many religious 

79 


8o Plain Tales From the Hills 


people are deeply suspicious. They seem — for 
purely religious purposes, of course — to know 
more about iniquity than the Unregenerate. 
Perhaps they were specially bad before they be- 
came converted ! At any rate, in the imputa- 
tion of things evil, and in putting the worst con- 
struction on things innocent, a certain type of 
good people may be trusted to surpass all others. 
The Colonel and his Wife were of that type. 
But the Colonel’s Wife was the worst. She man- 
ufactured the Station scandal, and — talked to her 
ayah ! Nothing more need be said. The Col- 
onel’s Wife broke up the Laplace’s home. The 
Colonel’s Wife stopped the Ferris-Haughtrey 
engagement. The Colonel’s Wife induced young 
Buxton to keep his wile down in the Plains 
through the first year of the marriage. Whereby 
little Mrs. Buxton died, and the baby with her. 
These things will be remembered against the 
Colonel’s Wife so long as there is a regiment in 
the country. 

But to come back to the Colonel and Platte. 
They went their several ways from the dressing- 
room. The Colonel dined with two Chaplains, 
while Platte went to a bachelor-party, and whist 
to follow. 

Mark how things happen 1 If Platte’s sais 
had put the new saddle-pad on the mare, the 
butts of the territs would not have worked through 
the worn leather and the old pad into the mare’s 
withers, when she was coming home at two 
o’clock in the morning. She would not have 
reared, bolted, fallen into a ditch, upset the cart, 
and sent Platte flying over an aloe-hedge on to 
Mrs. Larkyn’s well-kept lawn ; and this tale 
would never have been written. But the mare 


Watches of the Night 81 

did all these things, and while Platte was rolling 
over and over on the turf, like a shot rabbit, the 
watch and guard flew from his waistcoat — as an 
Infantry Major’s sword hops out of the scabbard 
when they are firing a feu de joie — and rolled 
and rolled in the moonlight, till it stopped under 
a window. 

Platte stuffed his handkerchief under the pad, 
put the cart straight, and went home. 

Mark again how Kismet works ! This would 
not happen once in a hundred years. Towards 
the end of his dinner with the two Chaplains, the 
Colonel let out his waistcoat and leaned over the 
table to look at some Mission Reports. The bar 
of the watch-guard worked through the button- 
hole, and the watch — Platte’s watch — slid quietly 
on to the carpet. Where the bearer found it 
next morning and kept it. 

Then the Colonel went home to the wife of 
his bosom ; but the driver of the carriage was 
drunk and lost his way. So the Colonel returned 
at an unseemly hour and his excuses were not 
accepted. If the Colonel’s Wife had been an 
ordinary “ vessel of wrath appointed for destruc- 
tion,” she would have known that when a man 
stays away on purpose, his excuse is always 
sound and original. The very baldness of the 
Colonel’s explanation proved its truth. 

See once more the workings of Kismet ! The 
Colonel’s watch which came with Platte hur- 
riedly on to Mrs. Larkyn’s lawn, chose to stop 
just under Mrs. Larkyn’s window, where she saw 
it early in the morning, recognized it, and picked 
it up. She had heard the crash of Platte’s cart 
at two o’clock that morning, and his voice calling 
the mare names. She knew Platte and liked 
6 


82 Plain Tales From the Hills 

him. That day she showed him the watch and 
heard his story. He put his head on one side, 
winked and said : — “ How disgusting I Shock- 
ing old man ! With his religious training, too ! 
I should send the watch to the Colonel’s Wife 
and ask for explanations.” 

Mrs. Larkyn thought for a minute of the La- 
places — whom she had known when Laplace and 
his wife believed in each other — and answered : — 
“ I will send it. I think it will do her good. 
But, remember, we must never tell her the 
truth.” 

Platte guessed that his own watch was in the 
Colonel’s possession, and thought that the return 
of the lip-strapped Waterbury with a soothing 
note from Mrs. Larkyn, would merely create a 
small trouble for a few minutes. Mrs. Larkyn 
knew better. She knew that any poison dropped 
would find good holding-ground in the heart of 
the Colonel’s Wife. 

The packet, and a note containing a few re- 
marks on the Colonel’s calling hours, were sent 
over to the Colonel’s Wife, who wept in her own 
room and took counsel with herself. 

If there was one woman under Heaven whom 
the Colonel’s Wife hated with holy fervor, it was 
Mrs. Larkyn. Mrs. Larkyn was a frivolous lady, 
and called the Colonel’s Wife “ old cat.” The 
Colonel’s Wife said that somebody in Revelations 
was remarkably like Mrs. Larkyn. She men- 
tioned other Scripture people as well. From 
the Old Testament. [But the Colonel’s Wife 
was the only person who cared or dared to say 
anything against Mrs. Larkyn. Every one else 
accepted her as an amusing, honest little body.] 
Wherefore, to believe that her husband had 


Watches of the Night 83 

been shedding watches under that “Thing’s” 
window at ungodly hours, coupled with the fact 
of his late arrival on the previous night, was. . . . 

At this point she rose up and sought her hus- 
band. He denied everything except the owner- 
ship of the watch. She besought him, for his 
Soul’s sake to speak the truth. He denied 
afresh, with two bad words. Then a stony 
silence held the Colonel’s Wife, while a man 
could draw his breath five times. 

The speech that followed is no affair of mine 
or yours. It was made up of wifely and 
womanly jealousy ; knowledge of old age and 
sunk cheeks ; deep mistrust born of the text 
that says even little babies’ hearts are as bad as 
they make them ; rancorous hatred of Mrs. 
Larkyn, and the tenets of the creed of the 
Colonel’s Wife’s upbringing. 

Over and above all, was the damning lip- 
strapped Waterbury, ticking away in the palm 
of her shaking, withered hand. At that hour, I 
think, the Colonel’s Wife realized a little of the 
restless suspicion she had injected into old La- 
place’s mind, a little of poor Miss Haughtrey’s 
misery, and some of the canker that ate into 
Buxton’s heart as he watched his wife dying 
before his eyes. The Colonel stammered and 
tried to explain. Then he remembered that his 
watch had disappeared ; and the mystery grew 
greater. The Colonel’s Wife talked and prayed 
by turns till she was tired, and went away to 
devise means for “ chastening the stubborn heart 
of her husband.” Which, translated, means, in 
our slang, “ tail-twisting.” 

You see, being deeply impressed with the 
doctrine of Original Sin, she could not believe 


84 Plain Tales From the Hills 

in the face of appearances. She knew too much, 
and jumped to the wildest conclusions. 

But it was good for her. It spoilt her life, as 
she had spoilt the life of the Laplaces. She had 
lost her faith in the Colonel, and — here the 
creed-suspicion came in — he might, she argued, 
have erred many times, before a merciful Provi- 
dence, at the hands of so unworthy an instru- 
ment as Mrs. Larkyn, had established his guilt. 
He was a bad, wicked, gray-haired profligate. 
This may sound too sudden a revulsion for a 
long-wedded wife ; -but it is a venerable fact 
that, if a man or woman makes a practise of, 
and takes a delight in, believing and spreading 
evil of people indifferent to him or her, he or she 
will end in believing evil of folk very near and 
dear. You may think, also, that the mere inci- 
dent of the watch was too small and trivial to 
raise this misunderstanding. It is another aged 
fact that, in life as well as racing, all the worst 
accidents happen at little ditches and cut-down 
fences. In the same way, you sometimes see a 
woman who would have made a Joan of Arc in 
another century and climate, threshing herself 
to pieces over all the mean worry of housekeep- 
ing. But that is another story. 

Her belief only made the Colonel’s Wife more 
wretched, because it insisted so strongly on the 
villainy of men. Remembering what she had 
done, it was pleasant to watch her unhappiness, 
and the penny-farthing attempts she made to 
hide it from the Station. But the Station knew 
and laughed heartlessly ; for they had heard the 
story of the watch, with much dramatic gesture, 
from Mrs. Larkyn’s lips. 

Once or twice Platte said to Mrs. Larkyn, see- 


Watches of the Night 85 

ing that the Colonel had not cleared himself : — 
“ This thing has gone far enough. I move we 
tell the Colonel’s Wife how it happened.” Mrs. 
Larkyn shut her lips and shook her head, and 
vowed that the Colonel’s Wife must bear her 
punishment as best she could. Now Mrs. 
Larkyn was a frivolous woman, in whom none 
would have suspected deep hate. So Platte took 
no action, and came to believe gradually, from 
the Colonel’s silence, that the Colonel must have 
“ run off the line ” somewhere that night, and, 
therefore, preferred to stand sentence on the 
lesser count of rambling into other people’s com- 
pounds out of calling-hours. Platte forgot about 
the watch business after a while, and moved 
down-country with his regiment. Mrs. Larkyn 
went home when her husband’s tour of Indian 
service expired. She never forgot. 

But Platte was quite right when he said that 
the joke had gone too far. The mistrust and the 
tragedy of it — which we outsiders cannot see 
and do not believe in — are killing the Colonel’s 
Wife, and are making the Colonel wretched. If 
either of them read this story, they can depend 
upon its being a fairly true account of the case, 
and can, “ kiss and make friends.” 

Shakespeare alludes to the pleasure of watch- 
ing an Engineer being shelled by his own Battery. 
Now this shows that poets should not write 
about what they do not understand. Anyone 
could have told him that Sappers and Gunners 
are perfectly different branches of the Service. 
But, if you correct the sentence, and substitute 
Gunner for Sapper, the moral comes just the 
same. 


THE OTHER MAN. 


When the earth was sick and the skies were gray, 

And the woods were rotted with rain, 

The Dead Man rode through the autumn day 
To visit his love again. 

Old Ballad. 

Far back in the “seventies,” before they had 
built any Public-Offices at Simla, and the broad 
road round Jakko lived in a pigeon-hole in the 
P. W. D. hovels, her parents made Miss Gaurey 
marry Colonel Schriederling. He could not 
have been much more than thirty-five years her 
senior ; and, as he lived on two hundred rupees 
a month and had money of his own, he was well 
off. He belonged to good people, and suffered 
in the cold weather from lung-complaints. In 
the hot weather he dangled on the brink of heat- 
apoplexy ; but it never quite killed him. 

Understand, I do not blame Schreiderling. 
He was a good husband according to his lights, 
and his temper only failed him when he was 
being nursed. Which was some seventeen days 
in each month. He was almost generous to his 
wife about money-matters, and that, for him, was 
a concession. Still Mrs. Schreiderling was not 
happy. They married her when she was this 
side of twenty and had given all her poor little 
heart to another man. I have forgotten his 
name, but we will call him the Other Man. He 
had no money and no prospects. He was not 
even good-looking ; and I think he was in the 
Commissariat or Transport. But, in spite of all 
86 


The Other Man 87 

these things, she loved him very badly ; and 
there was some sort of an engagement between 
the two when Schreiderling appeared and told 
Mrs. Gaurey that he wished to marry her 
daughter. Then the other engagement was 
broken off— washed away by Mrs. Gaurey ’s tears, 
for that lady governed her house by weeping 
over disobedience to her authority and the lack 
of reverence she received in her old age. The 
daughter did not take after her mother. She 
never cried. Not even at the wedding. 

The Other Man bore his loss quietly, and was 
transferred to as bad a station as he could find. 
Perhaps the climate consoled him. He suffered 
from intermittent fever, and that may have dis- 
tracted him from his other trouble. He was 
weak about the heart also. Both ways. One 
of the valves was affected, and the fever made 
it worse. This showed itself later on. 

Then many months passed, and Mrs. Schrei- 
derling took to being ill. She did not pine away 
like people in story books, but she seemed to 
pick up every form of illness that went about a 
station, from simple fever upwards. She was 
never more than ordinarily pretty at the best of 
times ; and the illness made her ugly. Schrei- 
derling said so. He prided himself on speaking 
his mind. 

When she ceased being pretty, he left her to 
her own devices, and went back to the lairs of 
his bachelordom. She used to trot up and down 
Simla Mall in a forlorn sort of way, with a gray 
Terai hat well on the back of her head, and a 
shocking bad saddle under her. Schreiderling’s 
generosity stopped at the horse. He said that 
any saddle would do for a woman as nervous as 


88 Plain Tales From the Hills 


Mrs. Schreiderling. She never was askecl to 
dance, because she did not dance well ; and she 
was so dull and uninteresting, that her box very 
seldom had any cards in it. Schreiderling said 
that if he had known that she was going to be 
such a scarecrow after her marriage, he would 
never have married her. He always prided him- 
self on speaking his mind, did Schreiderling ! 

He left her at Simla one August, and went 
down to his regiment. Then she revived a little, 
but she never recovered her looks. I found out 
at the Club that the Other Man is coming up 
sick — very sick — on an off chance of recovery. 
The fever and the heart-valves had nearly killed 
him. She knew that, too, and she knew — what 
I had no interest in knowing — when he was com- 
ing up. I suppose he wrote to tell her. They 
had not seen each other since a month before 
the wedding. And here comes the unpleasant 
part of the story. 

A late call kept me down at the Dovedell Hotel 
till dusk one evening. Mrs. Schreiderling had 
been flitting up and down the Mall all the after- 
noon in the rain. Coming up along the Cart- 
road, a tonga passed me, and my pony, tired 
with standing so long, set off at a canter. Just 
by the road down to the Tonga Office Mrs. 
Schreiderling, dripping from head to foot, was 
waiting for the tonga. I turned up-hill, as the 
tonga was no affair of mine ; and just then she 
began to shriek. I went back at once and saw, 
under the Tonga Office lamps, Mrs. Schreiderling 
kneeling in the wet road by the back seat of the 
newly-arrived tonga, screaming hideously. Then 
she fell face down in the dirt as I came up. 

Sitting in the back seat, very square and firm, 


The Other Man 


89 

with one hand on the awning-stanchion and the 
wet pouring off his hat and mustache, was the 
Other Man — dead. The sixty-mile up-hill jolt 
had been too much for his valve, I suppose. 
The tonga-driver said : “ This Sahib died two 
stages out of Solon. Therefore, I tied him with 
a rope, lest he should fall out by the way, and so 
came to Simla. Will the Sahib give me buk- 
shish ? It ” pointing to the Other Man, “ should 
have given one rupee.” 

The Other Man sat with a grin on his face, as 
if he enjoyed the joke of his arrival ; and Mrs. 
Schreiderling, in the mud, began to groan. 
There was no one except us four in the office 
and it was raining heavily. The first thing was 
to take Mrs. Schriederling home, and the second 
was to prevent her name from being mixed up 
with the affair. The tonga-driver received five 
rupees to find a bazar ’rickshaw for Mrs. Schreid- 
erling. He was to tell the Tonga Babu after- 
'wards of the Other Man, and the Babu was to 
make such arrangements as seemed best. 

Mrs. Schreiderling was carried into the shed 
out of the rain, and for three-quarters of an hour 
we two waited for the ’rickshaw. The Other 
Man was left exactly as he had arrived. Mrs. 
Schreiderling would do everything but cry, which 
might have helped her. She tried to scream as 
soon as her senses came back, and then she be- 
gan praying for the Other Man’s soul. Had she 
not been as honest as the day, she would have 
prayed for her own soul too. I waited to hear 
her do this, but she did not. Then I tried to get 
some of the mud off her habit. Lastly, the ’rick- 
shaw came, and I got her away — partly by force. 
It was a terrible business from beginning to end; 


90 Plain Tales From the Hills 

but most of all when the ’rickshaw had to squeeze 
between the wall and the tonga, and she saw by 
the lamp-light that thin, yellow hand grasping 
the awning-stanchion. 

She was taken home just as everyone was 
going to a dance at Viceregal Lodge — “ Peter- 
hoff” it was then — and the doctor found out that 
she had fallen from her horse, that I had picked 
her up at the back of Jakko, and really deserved 
great credit for the prompt manner in which I had 
secured medical aid. She did not die — men of 
Schreiderling’s stamp marry women who don’t 
die easily. They live and grow ugly. 

She never told of her one meeting, since her 
marriage, with the Other Man ; and, when the 
chill and cough following the exposure of that 
evening, allowed her abroad, she never by word 
or sign alluded to having met me by the Tonga 
Office. Perhaps she never knew. 

She used to trot up and down the Mall, on 
that shocking bad saddle, looking as if she ex- 
pected to meet some one round the corner every 
minute. Two years afterward, she went Home, 
and died — at Bournemouth, I think. 

Schreiderling, when he grew maudlin at Mess, 
used to talk about “ my poor dear wife.” He 
always set great store on speaking his mind, did 
Schreiderling ! 


CONSEQUENCES. 


Rosicrucian subtleties 
In the Orient had rise ; 

Ye may find their teachers still 
Under Jacat ala’s Hill. 

Seek ye Bombast Paracelsus, 

Read what Flood the Seeker tells us 
Of the Dominant that runs 
Through the cycles of the Suns — 

Read my story last and see 
Luna at her apogee. 

There are yearly appointments, and two- 
yearly appointments, and five-yearly appoint- 
ments at Simla, and there are, or used to be, 
permanent appointments, whereon you stayed 
up for the term of your natural life and secured 
red cheeks and a nice income. Of course, you 
could descend in the cold weather ; for Simla is 
rather dull then. 

Tarrion came from goodness knows where — 
all away and away in some forsaken part of 
Central India, where they call Pachmari a 
“Sanitarium,” and drive behind trotting bul- 
locks, I believe. He belonged to a regiment ; 
but what he really wanted to do was to escape 
from his regiment and live in Simla forever and 
ever. He had no preference for anything in par- 
ticular, beyond a good horse and a nice partner. 
He thought he could do everything well ; which 
is a beautiful belief when you hold it with all 
your heart. He was clever in many ways, and 
good to look at, and always made people round 
him comfortable — even in Central India. 

So he went up to Simla, and, because he was 

9i 


92 Plain Tales From the Hills 

clever and amusing, he gravitated naturally to 
Mrs. Hauksbee, who could forgive everything 
but stupidity. Once he did her great service by 
changing the date on an invitation-card for a 
big dance which Mrs. Hauksbee wished to at- 
tend, but couldn't because she had quarreled p 
with the A.-D.-C., who took care, being a mean 
man, to invite her to a small dance on the 6th 
instead of the big Ball of the 26th. It was a 
very clever piece of forgery ; and when Mrs. 
Hauksbee showed the A.-D.-C. her invitation- 
card, and chaffed him mildly for not better 
managing his vendettas, he really thought that 
he had made a mistake ; and — which was wise 
- — realized that it was no use to fight with Mrs. 
Hauksbee. She was grateful to Tarrion and 
asked what she could do for him. He said 
simply : “ I’m a Freelance up here on leave, on 
the look out for what I can loot. I haven’t a 
square inch of interest in all Simla. My name 
isn’t known to any man with an appointment in 
his gift, and I want an appointment — a good, 
sound, pukka one. I believe you can do any- 
thing you turn yourself to. Will you help me ?” 
Mrs. Hauksbee thought for a minute, and passed 
the lash of her riding-whip through her lips, as 
was her custom when thinking. Then her eyes 
sparkled and she said : “ I will ; ” and she shook 
hands on it. Tarrion, having perfect confidence 
in this great woman, took no further thought of 
the business at all. Except to wonder what sort 
of an appointment he would win. 

Mrs. Hauksbee began calculating the prices 
of all the Heads of Departments and Members 
of Council she knew, and the more she thought 
the more she laughed, because her heart was in 


Consequences 93 

the game and it amused her. Then she took a 
Civil List and ran over a few of the appoint- 
ments. There are some beautiful appointments 
in the Civil List. Eventually, she decided that, 
though Tarrion was too good for the Political 
Department, she had better begin by trying to 
get him in there. What were her own plans to 
this end, does not matter in the least, for Luck 
or Fate played into her hands and she had noth- 
ing to do but to watch the course of events and 
take the credit of them. 

All Viceroys, when they first come out, pass 
through the “ Diplomatic Secrecy ” craze. It 
wears off in time ; but they all catch it in the 
beginning, because they are new to the country. 
The particular Viceroy who was suffering from 
the complaint just then — this was a long time 
ago, before Lord Dufferin ever came from 
Canada, or Lord Ripon from the bosom of the 
English Church — had it very badly ; and the 
result was that men who were new to keeping 
official secrets went about looking unhappy ; 
and the Viceroy plumed himself on the way in 
which he had instilled notions of reticence into 
his Staff. 

Now, the Supreme Government have a care- 
less custom of committing what they do to 
printed papers. These papers deal with all 
sorts of things — from the payment of Rs. 200 to 
a “ secret service ” native, up to rebukes admin- 
istered to Vakils and Motamids of Native States, 
and rather brusque letters to Native Princes, 
telling them to put their houses in order, to re- 
frain from kidnapping women, or filling offend- 
ers with pounded red pepper, and eccentricities 
of that kind. Of course, these things could 


94 Plain Tales From the Hills 

never be made public, because Native Princes 
never err officially, and their States are, offi- 
cially as well administered as Our territories. 
Also, the private allowances to various queer 
people are not exactly matters to put into news- 
papers, though they give quaint reading some- 
times. When the Supreme Government is at 
Simla, these papers are prepared there, and go 
round to the people who ought to see them in 
office-boxes or by post. The principle of se- 
crecy was to that Viceroy quite as important as 
the practise, and he held that a benevolent des- 
potism like Ours should never allow even little 
things such as appointments of subordinate 
clerks, to leak out till the proper time. He was 
always remarkable for his principles. 

There was a very important batch of papers 
in preparation at that time. It had to travel 
from one end of Simla to the other by hand. It 
was not put into an official envelope, but a large, 
square, pale-pink one ; the matter being in MS. 
on soft crinkley paper. It was addressed to 
“ The Head Clerk, etc., etc." Now, between 
“The Head Clerk, etc,, etc.” and “ Mrs. Hauks- 
bee ” and a flourish, is no very great difference, 
if the address be written in a very bad hand, as 
this was. The chaprassi who took the envelope 
was not more of an idiot than most chrapassis. 
He merely forgot where this most unofficial 
cover was to be delivered, and so asked the first 
Englishman he met, who happened to be a man 
riding down to Annandale in a great hurry. 
The Englishman hardly looked, said : “ Hauksbee 
Sahib ki Mem t " and went on. So did the chap- 
rassi, because that letter was the last in stock 
and he wanted to get his work over. There was 


Consequences 95 

no book to sign ; he thrust the letter into Mrs. 
Hauksbee’s bearer’s hand and went off to smoke 
with a friend. Mrs. Hauksbee was expecting 
some cut-out pattern things in flimsy paper from 
a friend. As soon as she got the big square 
packet, therefore, she said, “ Oh, the dear crea- 
ture ! ” and tore it open with a paper-knife, and 
all the MS. enclosures tumbled out on the floor. 

Mrs. Hauksbee began reading. I have said 
the batch was rather important. That is quite 
enough for you to know. It referred to some 
correspondence, two measures, a peremptory 
order to a native chief and two dozen other 
things. Mrs. Hauksbee gasped as she read, for 
the first glimpse of the naked machinery of the 
Great Indian Government, stripped of its casings, 
and lacquer, and paint, and guard-rails, im- 
presses even the most stupid man. And Mrs. 
Hauksbee was a clever woman. She was a 
little afraid at first, and felt as if she had laid 
hold of a lightning-flash by the tail, and did not 
quite know what to do with it. There were re- 
marks and initials at the side of the papers ; 
and some of the remarks were rather more 
severe than the papers. The initials belonged 
to men who are all dead or gone now ; but they 
were great in their day. Mrs. Hauksbee read 
on and thought calmly as she read. Then the 
value of her trove struck her, and she cast about 
for the best method of using it. Then Tarrion 
dropped in, and they read through all the papers 
together, and Tarrion, not knowing how she had 
come by them, vowed that Mrs. Hauksbee was 
the greatest woman on earth. Which I believe 
was true, or nearly so. 

“ The honest course is always the best,” said 


96 Plain Tales From the Hills 

Tarrion after an hour and a half of study and 
conversation. “ All things considered, the In- 
telligence Branch is about my form. Either 
that or the Foreign Office. I go to lay siege to 
the High Gods in their Temples.” 

He did not seek a little man, or a little big 
man, or a weak Head of a strong Department, 
but he called on the biggest and strongest man 
that the Government owned, and explained that 
he wanted an appointment at Simla on a good 
salary. The compound insolence of this amused 
the Strong Man, and, as he had nothing to do 
for the moment, he listened to the proposals of 
the audacious Tarrion. “You have, I presume, 
some special qualifications, besides the gift of 
self-assertion, for the claims you put forward ? ” 
said the Strong Man. “ That, Sir,” said Tarrion, 
“ is for you to judge.” Then he began, for he 
had a good memory, quoting a few of the more 
important notes in the papers — slowly and one 
by one as a man drops chlorodyne into a glass. 
When he had reached the ’peremptory order — 
and it was a peremptory order — the Strong Man 
was troubled. 

Tarrion wound up : — “ And I fancy that 
special knowledge of this kind is at least as 
valuable for, let us say, a berth in the Foreign 
Office, as the fact of being the nephew of a dis- 
tinguished officer’s wife.” That hit the Strong 
Man hard, for the last appointment to the Foreign 
Office had been by black favor, and he knew it. 
“ I’ll see what I can do for you,” said the Strong 
Man. “ Many thanks,” said Tarrion. Then he 
left, and the Strong Man departed to see how 
the appointment was to be blocked. 


Consequences 97 

Followed a pause of eleven days ; with thum 
ders and lightnings and much telegraphing. 
The appointment was not a very important one, 
carrying only between Rs. 500 and Rs. 700 a 
month ; but, as the Viceroy said, it was the prin- 
ciple of diplomatic secrecy that had to be main- 
tained, and it was more than likely that a boy so 
well supplied with special information would be 
worth translating. So they translated him. 
They must have suspected him, though he pro- 
tested that his information was due to singular 
talents of his own. Now, much of this story, 
including the after-history of the missing en- 
velope, you must fill in for yourself, because 
there are reasons why it cannot be written. If 
you do not know about things Up Above, you 
won’t understand how to fill in, and you will say 
it is impossible. 

What the Viceroy said when Tarrion was in- 
troduced to him was : — “ So, this is the boy who 
4 rushed ’ the Government of India, is it ? Rec- 
ollect, Sir, that is not done twice .” So he must 
have known something. 

What Tarrion said when he saw his appoint- 
ment gazetted was : — “ If Mrs. Hauksbee were 
twenty years younger, and I her husband, I 
should be Viceroy of India in fifteen years.” 

What Mrs. Hauksbee said, when Tarrion 
thanked her, almost with tears in his eyes, was 
first ; — “ I told you so ! ” and next, to herself : — 
“ What fools men are ! ” 

7 


THE CONVERSION OF AURELIAN Mc- 
GOGGIN. 

Ride with an idle whip, ride with an unused heel. 

But, once in a way, there will come a day 
When the colt must be taught to feel 
The lash that falls, and the curb that galls, and the sting of the 
roweled steel. 

Life's Handicap. 


This is not a tale exactly. It is a Tract ; and 
I am immensely proud of it. Making a Tract is 
a Feat. 

Every man is entitled to his own religious 
opinions ; but no man — least of all a junior — has 
a right to thrust these down other men’s throats. 
The Government sends out weird Civilians now 
and again ; But McGoggin was the queerest ex- 
ported for a long time. He was clever — bril- 
liantly clever — but his cleverness worked the 
wrong way. Instead of keeping to the study of 
the vernaculars, he had read some books written 
by a man called Comte, I think, and a man called 
Spencer, and a Professor Clifford. [You will 
find these books in the Library.] They deal 
with people’s insides from the point of view of 
men who have no stomachs. There was no 
order against his reading them ; but his Mama 
should have smacked him. They fermented in 
his head, and he came out to India with a rare- 
fied religion over and above his work. It was 
not much of a creed. It only proved that men 
had no souls, and there was no God and no 
hereafter, and that you must worry along some- 
how for the good of Humanity. 


Aurelian McGoggin’s Conversion 99 

One of its minor tenets seemed to be that the 
one thing more sinful than giving an order was 
obeying it. At least, that was what McGoggin 
said ; but I suspect he had misread his primers. 

I do not say a word against this creed. It 
was made up in Town where there is nothing 
but machinery and asphalte and building — all 
shut in by the fog. Naturally, a man grows to 
think that there is no one higher than himself, 
and that the Metropolitan Board of Works made 
everything. But in this country, where you 
really see humanity — raw, brown, naked human- 
ity — with nothing between it and the blazing 
sky, and only the used-up, over-handled earth 
underfoot, the notion somehow dies away, and 
most folk come back to simpler theories. Life, 
in India, is not long enough to waste in proving 
that there is no one in particular at the head of 
affairs. For this reason. The Deputy is above 
the Assistant, the Commissioner above the Dep- 
uty, the Lieutenant-Governor above the Com- 
missioner, and the Viceroy above all four, under 
the orders of the Secretary of State who is re- 
sponsible to the Empress. If the Empress be not 
responsible to her Maker — if there is no Maker 
for her to be responsible to — the entire system 
of Our administration must be wrong. Which 
is manifestly impossible, At Home men are to 
be excused. They are stalled up a good deal 
and get intellectually “ beany.” When you take 
a gross, “ beany ” horse to exercise, he slavers 
and slobbers over the bit till you can’t see the 
horns. But the bit is there just the same. Men 
do not get “ beany ” in India. The climate and 
the work are against playing tricks with words. 
If McGoggin had kept his creed, with the cap- 


ioo Plain Tales From the Hills 


ital letters and the endings in “ isms,” to him- 
self, no one would have cared ; but his grand- 
fathers on both sides had been Wesleyan 
preachers, and the preaching strain came out in 
his mind. He wanted every one at the Club to 
see that they had no souls too, and to help him 
to eliminate his Creator. As a good many men 
told him, he undoubtedly had no soul, because 
he was so young, but it did not follow that his 
seniors were equally undeveloped ; and, whether 
there was another world or not, a man still 
wanted to read his papers in this. “ But that 
is not the point — that is not the point ! ” Aure- 
lian used to say. Then men threw sofa-cushions 
at him and told him to go to any particular place 
he might believe in. They christened him the 
“ Blastoderm,” — he said he came from a family 
of that name somewhere, in the pre- historic ages, 
— and, by insult and laughter strove to choke 
him dumb, for he was an unmitigated nuisance 
at the Club ; besides being an offense to the older 
men. His Deputy Commissioner, who was 
working on the Frontier when Aurelian was 
rolling on a bedquilt, told him that, for a clever 
boy, Aurelian was a very big idiot. And, you 
know, if he had gone on with his work, he 
would have been caught up to the Secretariat in 
a few years. He was just the type that goes 
there — all head, no physique and a hundred 
theories. Not a soul was interested in McGog- 
gin’s soul. He might have had two, or none, or 
somebody else’s. His business was to obey 
orders and keep abreast of his files instead of 
devastating the Club with “ isms.” 

He worked brilliantly ; but he could not ac- 
cept any order without trying to better it. That 


Aurelian McGoggin’s Conversion ior 

was the fault of his creed. It made men too 
responsible and left too much to their honor. 
You can sometimes ride an old horse in a halter ; 
but never a colt. McGoggin took more trouble 
over his cases than any of the men of his year. 
He may have fancied that thirty-page judgments 
on fifty-rupee cases — both sides perjured to the 
gullet — advanced the cause of Humanity. At 
any rate, he worked too much, and worried and 
fretted over the rebukes he received, and lectured 
away on his ridiculous creed out of office, tilL 
the doctor had to warm bim that he was over- 
doing it. No man can toil eighteen annas in 
the rupee in June without suffering. But Mc- 
Goggin was still intellectually “ beany ” and 
proud of himself and his powers, and he would 
take no hint. He worked nine hours a day 
steadily. 

“ Very well,” said the doctor, “ you’ll break 
down because you are over-engined for your 
beam.” McGoggin was a little chap. 

One day, the collapse came — as dramatically 
as if it had been meant to embellish a Tract. 

It was just before the Rains. We were sitting 
in the veranda in the dead, hot, close air, 
gasping and praying that the black-blue clouds 
would let down and bring the cool. Very, very 
far away, there was a faint whisper, which was 
the roar of the Rains breaking over the river. 
One of the men heard it, got out of his chair, 
listened, and said, naturally enough : — “ Thank 
God ! ” 

Then the Blastoderm turned in his place and 
said : — 

“Why? I assure you it’s only the result of 
perfectly natural causes — atmospheric phenom- 


102 Plain Tales From the Hills 


ena of the simplest kind. Why you should, 
therefore, return thanks to a Being who never 

did exist — who is only a figment ” 

“ Blastoderm,” grunted the man in the next 
chair, “ dry up, and throw me over the Pioneer. 
We know all about your figments.” The Blas- 
toderm reached out to the table, took up one 
paper, and jumped as if something had stung 
him. Then he handed the paper over. 

“ As I was saying,” he went on slowly and 
with an effort — “ due to perfectly natural causes 

— perfectly natural causes. I mean ” 

“ Hi ! Blastoderm, you’ve given me the Cal- 
cutta Mercantile Advertiser .” 

The dust got up in little whorls, while the tree- 
tops rocked and the kites whistled. But no one 
was looking at the coming of the Rains. We 
were all staring at the Blastoderm who had risen 
from his chair and was fighting with his speech. 
Then he said, still more slowly : — 

“ Perfectly conceivable dictionary red 

oak amenable cause retaining 

shuttlecock alone.” 

“ Blastoderm’s drunk,” said one man. But the 
Blastoderm was not drunk. He looked at us in 
a dazed sort of way, and began motioning with 
his hands in the half light as the clouds closed 
overhead. Then — with a scream : — 

“ What is it ? Can’t reserve attain- 
able market obscure.” 

But his speech seemed to freeze in him, and — 
just as the lightning shot two tongues that cut 
the whole sky into three pieces and the rain fell 
in quivering sheets — the Blastoderm was struck 
dumb. He stood pawing and champing like a 
hard-held horse, and his eyes were full of terror. 


Aurelian McGoggin’s Conversion 103 

The Doctor came over in three minutes, and 
heard the story. “ It’s aphasia ,’’ he said. 
41 Take him to his room. I knew the smash 
would come." We carried the Blastoderm across 
in the pouring rain to his quarters, and the Doc- 
tor gave him bromide of potassium to make him 
sleep. 

Then the Doctor came back to us and told us 
that aphasia was like all the arrears of “ Punjab 
Head " falling in a lump ; and that only once be- 
fore — in the case of a sepoy — had he met with 
so complete a case. I myself have seen mild 
aphasia in an overworked man, but this sudden 
dumbness was uncanny — though, as the Blasto- 
derm himself might have said, due to “ perfectly 
natural causes." 

“ He’ll have to take leave after this," said the 
Doctor. “ He won’t be fit to work for another 
three months. No ; it isn’t insanity or anytihng 
like it. It’s only complete loss of control over 
the speech and memory. I fancy it will keep 
the Blastoderm quiet, though." 

Two days later, the Blastoderm found his 
tongue again. The first question he asked was : — 
“ What was it ? ” The Doctor enlightened him. 
“ But I can’t understand it ! ” said the Blasto- 
derm ; “ I’m quite sane ; but I can’t be sure of 
my mind, it seems — my own memory — can I ? ” 

“ Go up into the Hills for three months, and 
don’t think about it,” said the Doctor. 

“ But I can’t understand it,” repeated the 
Blastoderm ; “ it was my own mind and mem- 
ory.” 

“ I can’t help it," said the Doctor ; there are a 
good many things you can’t understand ; and by 
the time you have put in my length of service, 


104 Plain Tales From the Hills 

you’ll know exactly how much a man dare call 
his own in this world.” 

The stroke cowed the Blastoderm. He could 
not understand it. He went into the Hills in 
fear and trembling, wondering whether he would 
be permitted to reach the end of any sentence he 
began. 

This gave him a wholesome feeling of mistrust. 
The legitimate explanation, that he had been 
overworking himself, failed to satisfy him. Some- 
thing had wiped his lips of speech, as a mother 
wipes the milky lips of her child, and he was 
afraid — horribly afraid. 

So the Club had rest when he returned ; and 
if ever you come across Aurelian McGoggin lay- 
ing down the law on things Human — he doesn’t 
seem to know as much as he used to about things 
Divine — put your forefinger on your lip for a 
moment, and see what happens. 

Don’t blame me if he throws a glass at your 
head ! 


THE TAKING OF LUNGTUNGPEN. 


So we loosed a bloomin’ volley, 

An’ we made the beggars cut, 

An’ when our pouch was emptied out, 

We used the bloomin’ butt, 

Ho ! My ! 

Don’t yer come anigh, 

When Tommy is a playin’ with the baynit an’ the butt. 

Barrack Room Ballad. 

My friend Private Mulvaney told me this, sitting 
on the parapet of the road to Dagshai, when we 
were hunting butterflies together. He had the- 
ories about the Army, and colored clay pipes 
'perfectly. He said that the young soldier is the 
best to work with, “on account av the surpass- 
ing innocinse av the child.” 

“Now, listen !”said Mulvaney, throwing him- 
self full length on the wall in the sun. “I’m a 
born scutt av the barrick-room ! The Army’s 
mate an’ drink to me’ bekaze I’m wan av the few 
that can’t quit ut. I’ve put in sivinteen years, 
an’ the pipeclay’s in the marrow av me. Av I 
cud have kept out av wan big dhrink a month, I 
wud have been a Hon’ry Lift’nint by this time — 
a nuisince to my betthers, a laughin’-shtock to 
my equils, an’ a curse to meself. Bein’ fwhat I 
am, I’m Privit Mulvaney, wid no good-conduc’ 
pay an’ a devourin’ thirst. Always barrin’ me 
little frind Bobs Bahadur, I know as much about 
the Army as most men.” 

I said something here. 

“ Wolseley be shot ! Betune you an’ me an’ 
that butterfly net, he’s a ramblin’, incoherflU-sort 
av a divil, wid wan oi on the Quane an’ the Coort, 

io 5 


io6 Plain Tales From the Hills 


an’ the other on his blessed silf — everlastin’ly 
playing Saysar an’ Alexandrier rowled into a 
lump. Now Bobs is a sinsible little man. Wid 
Bobs an’ a few three-year-olds, I’d swape any 
army av the earth into a jhairun , an’ throw it 
away aftherwards. Faith, I'm not jokin’ ! ’Tis 
the bhoys — the raw bhoys — that don’t know 
fwhat a bullut manes, an’ wudn’t care av they 
did — that dhu the work. They’re crammed wid 
bullmate till they fairly ramps wid good livin’ ; 
and thin, av they don’t fight, they blow each 
other’s hids off. ’Tis the trut’ I’m tellin’ you. 
They shud be kept on dal-bhat an’ kijri in the 
hot weather ; but there’d be a mut’ny av ’twas 
done. 

“ Did ye iver hear how Privit Mulvaney tuk 
the town av Lungtungpen ? I thought not ! 
’Twas the Lift’nint got the credit ; but t’was me 
planned the schame. A little betore I was invi- 
laded from Burma, me an’ four an’ twenty young 
wans undher a Lift’nint Brazenose, was ruinin’ 
our dijeshins thryin’ to catch dacoits. An’ such 
double-ended divils I niver knew ! 'Tis only a 
dah an’ a Snider that makes a decoit. Widout 
thim, he’s a paceful cultivator, an’ felony for to 
shoot. We hunted, an’ we hunted, an tuk fever 
an’ elephants now an’ again ; but no dacoits. 
Evenshually. ,w z. puckar owed wan man. ‘Trate 
him tinderly,’ sez the Lift’nint. So I tuk him 
away into the jungle, wid the Burmese Interprut’r 
an’ my clanin’-rod. Sez I to the man : — « My 
paceful squireen,’ sez I, 4 you shquot on your 
hunkers an’ dimonstrate to my frind here, where 
your Irinds are whin they’re at home ? ’ Wid 
that I introjuced him to the clanin’-rod, and he 
comminst to jabber ; the Interprut’r interprutin’ 


The Taking of Lungtungpen 107 

in betweens, an’ me helpin’ the Intilligince De- 
partmint wid my clanin’-rod whin the man 
misremimbered. 

“ Prisintly, I learnt that, acrost the river, about 
nine miles away, was a town just dhrippin' wid 
dahs, an’ bohs an’ arrows, an’ dacoits, an’ ele- 
phints, an' jingles. 4 Good! ’ sez I. 4 This office 
will now close ! ’ 

“ That night, I went to th Lift’nint an’ com- 
municates my information. I never thought 
much of Lift’nint Brazenose till that night. He 
was shtiff wid books an’ the-ouries, an’ all man- 
ner av thrimmin’s no manner av use. ‘Town 
did ye say ? ’ sez he. 4 Accordin’ to the the- 
ouries av War, weshud wait for reinforcemints.’ 
4 Faith ! ’ thinks I, 4 we’d betther dig our graves 
thin ’ ; for the nearest throops was up to their 
shtocks in the marshes out Mimbu way. 4 But,’ 
says the Lift’nint, 4 since ’tis a speshil case, I’ll 
make an excepshin. We’ll visit this Lungtung- 
pen to-night.’ 

44 The bhoys was fairly woild wid deloight 
whin I tould ’em ; an’ by this an’ that, they wint 
through the jungle like buck-rabbits. About 
midnight we come to the shtrame which I had 
clane forgot to minshin to my orficer. I was 
on, ahead, wid four bhoys, an’ I thought that the 
Lift’nint might want to the-ourize. 4 Shtrip, 
bhoys ! ’ sez I. 4 Shtrip to the buff, an’ shwim in 
where glory waits ! ’ 4 But I can't shwim ! ’ sez 

two av thim. ‘To think I should live to hear 
that from a bhoy wid a board-school edukashin ! ’ 
sez I. 4 Take a lump av thimber, an’ me an’ 
Conolly here will ferry ye over, ye young ladies ! ’ 

44 We got an ould tree-trunk, an’ pushed off 
wid the kits an’ the rifles on it. The night was 


io8 Plain Tales From the Hills 


chokin’ dhark, an’ just as we was fairly embarked, 
I heard the Lift’nint behind av me callin’ out. 
‘There’s a bit av a nullah here, Sorr,’ sez I, 
* but I can feel the bottom already.’ So I cud, 
for I was not a yard from the bank. 

“ ‘ Bit av a nullah ! Bit av an eshtuary 1 ’ sez 
the Lift’nint. ‘ Goon, ye mad Irishman ! Shtrip, 
bhoys ! ’ I heard him laugh ; an’ the bhoys 
begun shtrippin’ an’ rollin’ a log into the wather 
to put their kits on. So me an’ Conolly shtruck 
out through the warm wather wid our log, an’ 
the rest come on behind. 

“ That shtrame was miles woide ! Orth’ris, 
on the rear-rank log, whispers we had got into 
the Thames below Sheerness by mistake. * Kape 
on shwimmin’, ye little blayguard,’ says I, ‘ an’ 
don’t go pokin’ your dirty jokes at the Irriwaddy.’ 
‘Silence, men ! ’ sings out the Lift’nint. So we 
shwum on into the black dhark, wid our chests 
on the logs, trustin’ in the Saints an’ the luck av 
the British Army. 

“ Evenshually, we hit ground — a bit of sand — 
an’ a man. I put my heel on the back av him. 
He skreeched an’ ran. 

“ ‘ Now we’ve done it ! ’ sez Lift’nint Braze- 
nose. ‘ Where the Devil is Lungtungpen ? ’ 
There was about a minute and a half to wait. 
The bhoys laid a hould av their rifles an’ some 
thried to put their belts on ; we was marchin’ 
wid fixed baynits av coorse. Thi?i we knew 
where Lungtungpen was ; for we had hit the 
the river-wall av it in the dhark, an’ the whole 
town blazed wid thim rnzssm' jingles an’ Sniders 
like a cat’s back on a frosty night. They was 
firin’ all ways at wanst ; but over our hids into 
the shtrame. 


The Taking of Lungtungpen 109 

“ ‘ Have you got your rifles ? ’ sez Brazenose. 
‘Got ’em!’ sez Orth’ris, ‘I’ve got that thief 
Mulvaney’s for all my back-pay, an’ she’ll kick 
my heart sick wid that blunderin’ longshtock av 
hers.’ * Go on ! ’ yells Brazenose, whippin’ his 
sword out. ‘ Go on an’ take the town ! An’ the 
Lord have mercy on our sowls ! ’ 

“ Thin the bhoys gave wan divastatin’ howl, 
an’ pranced into the dhark, feelin' for the town, 
an’ blindin’ an’ stiffin’ like Cavalry Ridin’ Masters 
whin the grass pricked their bare legs. I ham- 
mered wid the butt at some bamboo thing that 
felt awake, an’ the rest come and hammered 
contagious, while the jingles was jingling, an’ 
feroshus yells from inside was shplittin’ our ears. 
We was too close under the wall for thim to 
hurt us. 

“ Evenshually, the thing, whatever ut was, 
bruk ; an’ the six and twinty av us tumbled, wan 
afther the other, naked as we was borrun, into 
the town of Lungtungpen. There was a melly 
av a sumpshus kind for a whoile ; but whether 
they tuk us, all white an’ wet, for a new breed 
av devil, or a new kind of dacoit, I don’t know. 
They ran as though we was both, an’ we wint 
into thim, baynit an’ butt, shriekin’ wid laughin’. 
There was torches in the shtreets, an’ I saw little 
Orth’ris rubbin’ his showlther ivry time he loosed 
my long-shtock Martini ; an’ Brazenose walkin’ 
into the gang wid his sword, like Diarmid avthe 
Golden Collar — barring he hadn’t a stitch of cloth- 
in' on him. We diskivered elephints wid decoits 
under their bellies, an’, what wid wan thing an’ 
another, we was busy till mornin’ takin’ posses- 
sion av the town of Lungtungpen. 

“Thin we halted an' formed up, the wimmen 


no Plain Tales From the Hills 


howlin’ in the houses an’ Lift’nint Brazenose 
blushin’ pink in the light av the mornin’ sun. 
’Twas the most ondasint p’rade I ivertukahand 
in. Foive and twenty privits an’ a orficer av the 
line in review ordher, an’ not as much as wud 
dust a fife betune ’em all in the way of clothin’ ! 
Eight of us had their belts an’ pouches on ; but 
the rest had gone in wid a handful of cartridges 
an’ the skin God gave him. They was as nakid 
as Vanus. 

“ • Number off from the right ! ’ sez the Lift’- 
nint. ‘ Odd numbers fall out to dress ; even 
numbers pathrol the town till relieved by the 
dressing party.’ Let me tell you, pathrolin’ a 
town wid nothing on is an ex^ayrience. I 
pathroled for ten minutes, an’ begad, before 
’twas over, I blushed. The women laughed so. 
I niver blushed before or since ; but I blushed 
all over my carkiss thin. Orth’ris didn’t pathrol. 
He sez only : — “ Portsmith Barricks an’ the ’Ard 
av a Sunday ! ’ Thin he lay down an’ rowled 
anyways wid laughin’. 

“When we was all dhressed, we counted the 
dead — sivinty-foive dacoits besides wounded. We 
tuk five elephints, a hunder’ an’ sivinty Sniders, 
two hunder’ dahs, and a lot av other burglarious 
thruck. Not a man av us was hurt — excep’ may- 
be the Lift’nint, an’ he from the shock to his 
dasincy. 

“ The Headman av Luntungpen, who sur- 
rinder’d himself, asked the Interprut’r : — ‘ Avthe 
English fight like that wid their clo’es off, what 
in the wurruld do they do wid their clo’es on ? ’ 
Orth’ris began rowlin’ his eyes an’ crackin’ his 
fingers an’ dancin’ a step-dance for to impress 
the Headman. He ran to his house ; an’ we 


The Taking of Lungtungpen hi 

spint the rest av the day carryin’ the Lift’nint on 
our showlthers round the town, an playin’ wid 
the Burmese babies — fat, little, brown little devils, 
as pretty as pictures. 

“ Win I was inviladed for the Dysent’ry to 
India, I sez to the Lift’nint : — ‘ Sorr,’ sez I, 
‘you’ve the makin’s in you av a great man ; but, 
av you’ll let an ould sodger spake, you’re too 
fond of th z-ourizin\ He shuk hands wid me 
and sez : — “ Hit high, hit low, there’s no plasin 
you, Mulvaney. Y ou’ve seen me waltzin’ through 
Lungtungpen like a Red Injin widout the war- 
paint, an’ you say I’m too fond av th e-ourizin’ ? ’ 
* Sorr,’ sez I, for I loved the bhoy ; * I wud waltz 
wid you in that condishin through Hell , an’ so 
wud the rest av the men ! ’ Thin I wint down- 
shtrame in the flat an’ left him my blessin’. 
May the Saints carry ut where ut shud go, for he 
was a fine upstandin’ young orficer. 

“ To reshume ! Fwhat I’ve said jist shows 
the use av three-year-olds. Wud fifty seasoned 
sodgers have taken Lungtungpen in the dhark 
that way ? No ! They’d know the risk av fever 
an chill. Let alone the shootin’. Twohundher’ 
might have done ut. But the three-year-olds 
know little an’ care less ; an’ where there’s no 
fear, there’s no danger. Catch thim young, feed 
thim high, an’ by the honor av that great, little 
man Bobs, behind a good orficer ’tisn’t only 
dacoits they’d smash wid their clo’es off — ’tis 
Con-ti-nental Ar-r-r-mies ! They tuk Lungtung- 
pen nakid ; an’ they’d take St. Pethersburg in 
their dhrawers ! Begad, they would that ! 

“ Here’s your pipe, Sorr ! Shmoke her tin- 
derly wid honey-dew, afther letting the reek av 
the Canteen plug die away. But ’tis no good, 


1 12 Plain Tales From the Hills 


thanks to you all the same, fillin’ my pouch wid 
your chopped bhoosa. Canteen baccy’s like the 
Army. It shpoils a man’s taste for moilder 
things.” 

So saying, Mulvaney took up his butterfly-net, 
and marched to barracks. 


A GERM DESTROYER. 


Pleasant it is for the Little Tin Gods 
When great Jove nods ; 

But Little Tin Gods make their little mistakes 
In missing the hour when great Jove wakes. 

As a general rule, it is inexpedient to meddle 
with questions of State in a land where men are 
1 highly paid to work them out for you. This tale 
is a justifiable exception. 

Once in every five years, as you know, we in- 
dent for a new Viceroy ; and each Viceroy im- 
ports, with the rest of his baggage, a Private 
Secretary, who may or may not be the real 
Viceroy, just as Fate ordains. Fate looks after 
! the Indian Empire because it is so big and so 
helpless. 

There was a Viceroy once, who brought out 
with him a turbulent Private Secretary — a hard 
man with a soft manner and a morbid passion 
for work. This Secretary was called Wonder — 
John Fennil Wonder. The Viceroy possessed 
no name — nothing but a string of counties and 
two-thirds of the alphabet after them. He said, 
in confidence, that he was the electro-plated 
figure-head of a golden administration, and he 
watched in a dreamy, amused way Wonder’s 
attempts to draw matters which were entirely 
outside his province into his own hands. “ When 
we are all cherubims together,” said His Excel- 
lency once, “ my dear, good friend Wonder will 
head the conspiracy for plucking out Gabriel’s 


1 14 Plain Tales From the Hills 


tail-feathers, or stealing Peter’s keys. Then I 
shall report him.” 

But, though the Viceroy did nothing to check 
Wonder’s officiousness, other people said un- 
pleasant things. Maybe the Members of Council 
began it ; but, finally, all Simla agreed that 
there was “ too much Wonder, and too little 
Viceroy ” in that regime . Wonder was always 
quoting “ His Excellency.” It was “ His Ex- 
cellency this,” “ His Excellency that,” “ In the 
opinion of his Excellency,” and so on. The 
Viceroy smiled ; but he did not heed. He said 
that, so long as his old men squabbled with his 
“ dear, good Wonder,” they might be induced to 
leave the “Immemorial East” in peace. 

“ No wise man has a policy,” said the Viceroy. 
“ A Policy is the blackmail levied on the Fool by 
the Unforeseen. I am not the former, and I do 
not believe in the latter.” 

I do not quite see what this means, unless it 
refers to an Insurance Policy. Perhaps it was 
the Viceroy’s way of saying : — “ Lie low.” 

That season, came up to Simla one of these 
crazy people with only a single idea. These are 
the men who make things move ; but they are 
not nice to talk to. This man’s name was 
Mellish, and he had lived for fifteen years on 
land of his own, in Lower Bengal, studying 
cholera. He held that cholera was a germ that 
propagated itself as it flew through a muggy 
atmosphere ; and stuck in the branches of trees 
like a woolflake. The germ could be rendered 
sterile, he said, by “ Mellish’s Own Invincible 
Fumigatory” — a heavy violet-black powder — 
“ the result of fifteen years’ scientific investiga- 
tion, Sir ! ” 


The Germ Destroyer 115 

Inventors seem very much alike as a caste. 
They talk loudly, especially about “ conspiracies 
of monopolists ; ” they beat upon the table with 
their fists ; and they secrete fragments of their 
inventions about their persons. 

Mellish said that there was a Medical “Ring” 
at Simla, headed by the Surgeon-General, who 
was in league, apparently, with all the Hospital 
Assistants in the Empire. I forget exactly how 
he proved it, but it had something to do with 
“skulking up to the Hills”; and what Mellish 
wanted was the independent evidence of the 
Viceroy — “ Steward of our Most Gracious Ma- 
jesty the Queen, Sir.” So Mellish went up to 
Simla, with eighty-four pounds of Fumigatory in 
his trunk, to speak to the Viceroy and to show 
him the merits of the invention. 

But it is easier to see a Viceroy than to talk 
to him, unless you chance to be as important as 
Mellishe of Madras. He was a six-thousand- 
rupee man, so great that his daughters never 
“ married.” They “ contracted alliances.” He 
himself was not paid. He “ received emolu- 
ments,” and his journeys about the country were 
“ tours of observation.” His business was to 
stir up the people in Madras with a long pole — 
as you stir up tench in a pond — and the people 
had to come up out of their comfortable old ways 
and gasp : — “ This is Enlightenment and Prog- 
ress. Isn’t it fine ! ” Then they gave Mellishe 
statues and jasmine garlands, in the hope of 
getting rid of him. 

Mellishe came up to Simla “ to confer with the 
Viceroy.” That was one of his perquisites. 
The Viceroy knew nothing of Mellishe except 
that he was “one of those middle-class deities 


n6 


Plain Tales From the Hills 



who seem necessary to the spiritual comfort of 
this Paradise of the Middle-classes,” and that, in 
all probability, he had “ suggested, designed, I] 
founded, and endowed all the public institutions i 
in Madras.” Which proves that His Excellency, j 
though dreamy, had experience of the ways of 1 
six-thousand-rupee men. 

Mellishe’s name was E. Mellishe, and Mellish’s 1 
was E. S. Mellish, and they were both staying at 1 
the same hotel, and the Fate that looks after the [ 
Indian Empire ordained that Wonder should i 
blunder and drop the final “ e y ” that the Cha- I 
prassi should help him, and that the note which f 
ran : “ Dear Mr . Mellish. — Can you set aside 
your other engagements , and lunch with us at ' 
two to-morrow ? His Excellency has an hour at 
your disposal then ,” should be given to Mellish ! 
with the Fumigatory. He nearly wept with pride i 
and delight, and at the appointed hour cantered 
to Peterhoff, a big-paper bag full of the Fumiga- 
tory in his coat-tail pockets. He had his chance, ;■ 
and he meant to make the most of it. Mellishe 
of Madras had been so portentously solemn about 
his “conference,” that Wonder had arranged for 
a private tiffin, — no A.-D.-C.’s, no Wonder, no 
one but the Viceroy, who said plaintively that 
he feared being left alone with unmuzzled auto- 
crats like the great Mellishe of Madras. 

But his guest did not bore the Viceroy. On 
the contrary, he amused him. Mellish was nerv- 
ously anxious to go straight to his Fumigatory, 
and talked at random until tiffin was over and His 
Excellency asked him to smoke. The Viceroy 
was pleased with Mellish because he did not 
“ talk shop.” 

As soon as the cheroots were lit, Mellish spoke 


The Germ Destroyer 117 

like a man ; beginning with his cholera-theory, 
reviewing his fifteen years’ “ scientific labors,” the 
machinations of the “ Simla Ring,” and the ex- 
cellence of his Fumigatory, while the Viceroy 
watched him between half-shut eyes and thought : 
“ Evidently, this is the wrong tiger ; but it is an 
original animal.” Mellish’s hair was standing 
on end with excitement, and he stammered. He 
began groping in his coat-tails and, before the 
Viceroy knew what was about to happen, he had 
tipped a bagful of his powder into the big silver 
ash-tray. 

“J-j-judge for yourself, Sir,” said Mellish. 
“ Y’ Excellency shall judge for yourself! Abso- 
lutely infallible, on my honor.” 

He plunged the lighted end of his cigar into 
the powder, which began to smoke like a vol- 
cano, and send up fat, greasy wreaths of copper- 
colored smoke. In five seconds the room was 
filled with a most pungent and sickening stench 
. — a reek that took fierce hold of the trap of your 
windpipe and shut it. The powder then hissed 
and fizzed, and sent out blue and green sparks, 
and the smoke rose till you could neither see, 
nor breathe, nor gasp. Mellish, however, was 
used to it. 

“Nitrate of strontia,” he shouted; “baryta, 
bone-meal et-cetera! Thousand cubic feet smoke 
per cubic inch. Not a germ could live — not a 
germ, Y’ Excellency ! ” 

But His Excellency had fled, and was cough- 
ing at the foot of the stairs, while all Peterhoff 
hummed like a hive. Red Lancers came in, and 
the Head Chaprassi, who speaks English, came 
in, and mace-bearers came in, and ladies ran 
downstairs screaming, “ fire ” ; for the smoke 


n8 Plain Tales From the Hills 


was drifting through the house and oozing out of 
the windows, and bellying along the verandas, 
and wreathing and writhing across the gardens. 
No one could enter the room where Mellish was 
lecturing on his Fumigatory, till that unspeak- 
able powder had burned itself out. 

Then an Aide-de-Camp, who desired theV. C., 
rushed through the rolling clouds and hauled 
Mellish into the hall. The Viceroy was pros- 
trate with laughter, and could only waggle his 
hands feebly at Mellish, who was shaking a fresh 
bagful of powder at him. 

“ Glorious ! Glorious ! ” sobbed His Excel- 
lency. “ Not a germ, as you justly observed, 
could exist ! I can swear it. A magnificent 
success ! ” 

Then he laughed till the tears came, and 
Wonder, who had caught the real Mellishe 
snorting on the Mall, entered and was deeply 
shocked at the scene. But the Viceroy was de- 
lighted, because he saw that Wonder would 
presently depart. Mellish with the Fumigatory 
was also pleased, for he felt that he had smashed 
the Simla Medical “ Ring.” 

Few men could tell a story like His Excellency 
when he took the trouble, and the account of 
“ my dear, good Wonder’s friend with the 
powder” went the round of Simla, and flippant 
folk made Wonder unhappy by their remarks. 

But His Excellency told the tale once too often 
— for Wonder. As he meant to do. It was at 
a Seepee Picnic. Wonder was sitting just be- 
hind the Viceroy. 

“ And I really thought for a moment,” wound 
up His Excellency, “ that my dear, good Wonder 


The Germ Destroyer 119 

had hired an assassin to clear his way to the 
throne ! ” 

Every one laughed ; but there was a delicate 
subtinkle in the Viceroy’s tone which Wonder 
understood. He found that his health was 
giving away ; and the Viceroy allowed him to 
go, and presented him with a flaming “ char- 
acter ” for use at Home among big people. 

“ My fault entirely,” said His Excellency, in 
after seasons, with a twinkling in his eye. “ My 
inconsistency must always have been distasteful 
to such a masterly man.” 


KIDNAPPED. 


There is a tide in the affairs of men, 

Which, taken any way you please, is bad, 

And strands them in forsaken guts and creeks 
No decent soul would think of visiting. 

You cannot stop the tide ; but now and then, 

You may arrest some rash adventurer 

Who — h’m — will hardly thank you for your pains. 

Vibarfs Moralities. 

We are a high-caste and enlightened race, 
and infant-marriage is very shocking and the 
consequences are sometimes peculiar ; but, 
nevertheless, the Hindu notion — which is the 
Continental notion, which is the aboriginal no- 
tion — of arranging marriages irrespective of the 
personal inclinations of the married, is sound. 
Think for a minute, and you will see that it must 
be so ; unless, of course, you believe in “ affini- 
ties.” In which case you had better not read 
this tale. How can a man who has never mar- 
ried ; who cannot be trusted to pick up at sight 
a moderately sound horse ; whose head is hot 
and upset with visions of domestic felicity, go 
about the choosing of a wife ? He cannot see 
straight or think straight if he tries ; and the 
same disadvantages exist in the case of a girl’s 
fancies. But when mature, married and discreet 
people arrange a match between a boy and a 
girl, they do it sensibly, with a view to the future, 
and the young couple live happily ever after- 
wards. As everybody knows. 

Properly speaking, Government should estab- 
lish a Matrimonial Department, efficiently offi- 
120 


Kidnapped 12 1 

cered, with a Jury of Matrons, a Judge of the 
Chief Court, a Senior Chaplain, and an Awful 
Warning, in the shape of a love-match that has 
gone wrong, chained to the trees in the court- 
Syard. All marriages should be made through 
the Department, which might be subordinate to 
the Educational Department, under the same 
penalty as that attaching to the transfer of land 
without a stamped document. But Government 
won’t take suggestions. It pretends that it is 
too busy. However, I will put my notion on 
| record, and explain the example that illustrates 
the theory. 

Once upon a time there was a good young 
man — a first-class officer in his own Department 
— a man with a career before him and, possibly, 
a K. C. I. E. at the end of it. All his superiors 
spoke well of him, because he knew how to hold 
his tongue and his pen at the proper times. 
There are to-day only eleven men in India who 
possess this secret ; and they have all, with one 
exception, attained great honor and enormous 
incomes. 

This good young man was quiet and self-con- 
tained — too old for his years by far. Which al- 
ways carries its own punishment. Had a Sub- 
altern, or a Tea-Planter’s Assistant, or anybody 
who enjoys life and has no care for to-morrow, 
done what he tried to do not a soul would have 
cared. But when Peythroppe — the estimable, 
virtuous, economical, quiet, hard-working, young 
Peythroppe — fell, there was a flutter through five 
Departments. 

The manner of his fall was in this way. He 
met a Miss Castries — d’Castries it was originally, 
but the family dropped the d’ for administrative 


122 Plain Tales From the Hills 


reasons — and he fell in love with her even more 
energetically than he worked. Understand 
clearly that there was not a breath of a word to 
be said against Miss Castries — not a shadow of 
a breath. She was good and very lovely — pos- 
sessed what innocent people at home call a 
“Spanish" complexion, with thick blue-] ’ack 
hair growing low down on the forehead, i;. o a 
“ widow’s peak,” and big violet eyes under ye- 
brows as black and as straight as the border- of 
a Gazette Extraordinary , when a big man di^sH 

But but but . Well, she was a v* ry 

sweet girl and very pious, but for many reas ns 
she was “ impossible.” Quite so. All g paV 
Mamas know what “ impossible ” means. It v> as 
obviously absurd that Peythroppe should ms ry 
her. The little opal-tinted onyx at the bast of 
her finger-nails said this as plainly as prnt.* 
Further, marriage with Miss Castries meant 
marriage with several other Castries — Honorary* 
Lieutenant Castries her Papa, Mrs. Eulalie 
Castries her Mama, and all the ramifications of 
the Castries family, on incomes ranging front | 
Rs. 175 to Rs. 470 a month, and their wives and 
connections again. 

It would have been cheaper for Peythroppe to 
have assaulted a Commissioner with a dog-whip, | 
or to have burned the records of a Deputy Com- 
missioner’s Office, than to have contracted an 
alliance with the Castries. It would have 
weighted his after-career less — even under a J 
Government which never forgets and never for-| 
gives. Everybody saw this but Peythroppe. He 
was goingto marry Miss Castries, he was — being 
of age and drawing a good income — and woe 
betide the house that would not afterwards re- 


Kidnapped 123 

ceive Mrs. Virginie Saulez Peythroppe with the 
deference due to her husband’s rank. That was 
Peythroppe’s ultimatum, and any remonstrance 
drove him frantic. 

These sudden madnesses most afflict the sanest 
men. There was a case once — but I will tell 
you of that later on. You cannot account for 
the mania, except under a theory directly con- 
tradicting the one about the Place wherein mar- 
riages are made. Peythroppe w r as burningly 
anxious to put a millstone round his neck at the 
outset of his career ; and argument had not the 
least effect on him. He was going to marry 
Miss Castries, and the business was his own 
business. He would thank you to keep your ad- 
vice to yourself. With a man in this condition, 
mere words only fix him in his purpose. Of 
course he cannot see that marriage out here 
does not concern the individual but the Govern- 
ment he serves. 

Do you remember Mrs. Hauksbee — the most 
wonderful woman in India ? She saved Pluffles 
from Mrs. Reiver, won Tarrion his appointment 
in the Foreign Office, and was defeated in open 
field by Mrs. Cusack-Bremmil. She heard of 
the lamentable condition of Peythroppe, and her 
brain struck out the plan that saved him. She had 
the wisdom of the Serpent, the logical coherence 
of the Man, the fearlessness of the Child, and 
the triple intuition of the Woman. Never — no, 
never — as long as a tonga buckets down the 
Solon dip, or the couples go a-riding at the back 
of Summer Hill, will there be such a genius as 
Mrs. Hauksbee. She attended the consultation 
of Three Men on Peythroppe’s case ; and she 


124 Plain Tales From the Hills 

stood up with the lash of her riding whip be- 
tween her lips and spake. 

Three weeks later, Peythroppe dined with the 
Three Men, and the Gazette of India came in. 
Peythroppe found to his surprise that he had 
been gazetted a month’s leave. Don’t ask me 
how this was managed. I believe firmly that, 
if Mrs. Hauksbee gave the order, the whole 
Great Indian Administration would stand on 
its head. The Three Men had also a month’s 
leave each. Peythroppe put the Gazette down 
and said bad words. Then there came from the 
compound the soft “ pad-pad ” of camels — 
“ thieves’ camels,” the Bikaneer breed that don’t 
bubble and howl when they sit down and get 
up. 

After that, I don’t know what happened. This 
much is certain. Peythroppe disappeared — 
vanished like smoke — and the long toot-rest 
chair in the house of the Three Men was broken 
to splinters. Also a bedstead departed from 
one of the bedrooms. 

Mrs. Hauksbee said that Mr. Peythroppe was 
shooting in Rajputana with the Three Men ; so 
we were compelled to believe her. 

At the end of the month, Peythroppe was 
gazetted twenty days’ extension of leave ; but 
there was wrath and lamentation in the house of 
Castries. The marriage-day had been fixed, but 
the bridegroom never came : and the D’Silvas, 
Pereiras, and Ducketts lifted their voices and 
mocked Honorary Lieutenant Castries as one 
who had been basely imposed upon. Mrs. 
Hauksbee went to the wedding, and was much 
astonished when Peythroppe did not appear. 


Kidnapped 125 

After seven weeks, Peythroppe and the Three 
Men returned from Rajputana. Peythroppe was 
in hard tough condition, rather white, and more 
self-contained than ever. 

One of the Three Men had a cut on his nose, 
caused by the kick of a gun. Twelve-bores kick 
rather curiously. 

Then came Honorary Lieutenant Castries, 
seeking for the blood of his perfidious son-in-law 
to be. He said things — vulgar and “ impossible ” 
things, which showed the raw rough “ ranker ” 
below the “ Honorary,” and I fancy Pey- 
throppe’s eyes were opened. Anyhow, he held his 
peace till the end ; when he spoke briefly. Hon- 
orary Lieutenant Castries asked for a “peg” 
before he went away to die or bring a suit for 
breach of promise. 

Miss Castries was a very good girl. She said 
that she would have no breach of promise suits. 
She said that, if she was not a lady, she was re- 
fined enough to know that ladies kept their 
broken hearts to themselves ; and, as she ruled 
her parents, nothing happened. Later on, she 
married a most respectable and gentlemanly 
person. He traveled for an enterprising firm in 
Calcutta, and was all that a good husband should 
be. 

So Peythroppe came to his right mind again, 
and did much good work, and was honored by 
all who knew him. One of these days he will 
marry ; but he will marry a sweet pink-and-white 
maiden, on the Government House List, with a 
little money and some influential connections, 
as every wise man should. And he will never, 
all his life, tell her what happened during the 
seven weeks of his shooting-tour in Rajputana. 


126 Plain Tales From the Hills 


But just think how much trouble and expense 
— for camel-hire is not cheap, and those Bik- 
aneer brutes had to be fed like humans — might 
have been saved by a properly conducted Matri- 
monial Department, under the control of the 
Director-General of Education, but correspond- 
ing direct with the Viceroy. 


THE ARREST OF LIEUTENANT 
GOLIGHTLY. 


“ ‘ I’ve forgotten the countersign,’ sez ’e. 

“ ‘ Oh ! You ’ave, ’ave you ? ’ sez I. 

“ ‘ But I’m the Colonel,’ sez ’e. 

“‘Oh! You are, are you?’ sez I. ‘Colonel nor no Colonel, 
you waits ’ere till I’m relieved, an’ the Sarjint reports on your 
ugly old mug. Coop l'* sez I. 

“ An’ s’elp me soul, ’twas the Colonel after all ! But I was a 
recruitythen.” 

The Unedited Autobiography of Private Or then's. 

If there was one thing on which Golightly 
prided himself more than another, it was looking 
like “an Officer and a Gentleman.” He said it 
was for the honor of the Service that he had at- 
tired himself so elaborately ; but those who knew 
him best said that it was just personal vanity. 
There was no harm about Golightly — not an 
ounce. He recognized a horse when he saw one, 
and could do more than fill a cantle. He played 
a very fair game at billiards, and was a sound 
man at the whist-table. Every one liked him ; 
and nobody ever dreamed of seeing him hand- 
cuffed on a station platform as a deserter. But 
this sad thing happened. 

He was going down from Dalhousie, at the 
end of his leave — riding down. He had cut his 
leave as fine as he dared, and wanted to come 
down in a hurry. 

It was fairly warm at Dalhousie, and, knowing 
what to expect below, he descended in a new 
khaki suit — tight fitting — of a delicate olive- 
green ; a peacock-blue tie, white collar, and a 
snowy white so/ah helmet. He prided himself 

127 


128 Plain Tales From the Hills 


on looking neat even when he was riding post. 
He did look neat, and he was so deeply concerned 
about his appearance before he started that he 
quite forgot to take anything but some small 
change with him. He left all his notes at the 
hotel. His servants had gone down the road 
before him, to be ready in waiting at Pathankote 
with a change of gear. That was what he 
called traveling in “ light marching-order.” He 
was proud of his faculty of organization — what 
we call bundobust. 

Twenty-two miles out ofDalhousie it began to 
rain — not a mere hill-shower but a good, tepid 
monsoonish downpour. Golightly bustled on, ' 
wishing that he had brought an umbrella. The 
dust on the roads turned into mud, and the pony 
mired a good deal. So did Golightly ’s khaki 
gaiters. But he kept on steadily and tried to 
think how pleasant the coolth was. 

His next pony was rather a>brute at starting, 
and Golightly’s hands being slippery with the 
rain, contrived to get rid of Golightly at a cor- ; 
ner. He chased the animal, caught it, and went 
ahead briskly. The spill had not improved his 
clothes or his temper, and he had lost one spur. 
He kept the other one employed. By the time 
that stage was ended, the pony had had as much 
exercise as he wanted and, in spite of the rain, 
Golightly was sweating freely. At the end of 
another miserable half-hour, Golightly found the 
world disappear before his eyes in clammy pulp. 
The rain had turned the pith of his huge and 
snowy solah-topee into an evil-smelling dough, 
and it had closed on his head like a half-opened 
mushroom. Also the green lining Was begin- 
ning to run. 


Arrest of Lieutenant Golightly 129 

Golightly did not say anything worth record- 
ing here. He tore off and squeezed up as much 
ot the brim as was in his eyes and plowed on. 
The back, of the helmet was flapping on his neck 
and the sides stuck to his ears, but the leather 
band and green lining kept things roughly to- 
gether, so that the hat did not actually melt away 
where it flapped. 

Presently, the pulp and the green stuff made a 
sort of slimy mildew which ran over Golightly in 
several directions — down his back and bosom 
for choice. The khaki color ran too — it was 
really shockingly bad dye — and sections of Go- 
lightly were brown, and patches were violet, and 
contours were ochre, and streaks were ruddy 
red, and blotches were nearly white, according 
to the nature and peculiarities of the dye. When 
he took out his handkerchief to wipe his face and 
the green of the hat-lining and the purple stuff 
that had soaked through onto his neck from the 
tie became thoroughly mixed, the effect was 
amazing. 

Near Dhar the rain stopped and the evening 
sun came out and dried him up slightly. It fixed 
the colors, too. Three miles from Pathankote 
the last pony fell dead lame, and Golightly was 
forced to walk. He pushed on into Pathankote 
to find his servants. He did not know then that 
his kliitmatgar had stopped by the roadside to 
get drunk, and would come on the next day say- 
ing that he had sprained his ankle. When he 
got into Pathankote, he couldn’t find his serv- 
ants, his boots were stiff and ropy with mud, and 
there were large quantities of dirt about his 
body. The blue tie had run as much as the 
khaki. So he took it off with the collar and 

9 


130 Plain Tales From the Hills 

threw it away. Then he said something about 
servants generally and tried to get a peg. He 
paid eight annas for the drink, and this revealed 
to him that he had only six annas more in his 
pocket — or in the world as he stood at that hour. 

He went to the Station-Master to negotiate lor 
a first-class ticket to Khasa, where he was sta- 
tioned. The booking-clerk said something to 
the Station-Master, the Station-Master said some- 
thing to the Telegraph Clerk, and the three 
looked at him with curiosity. They asked him 
to wait for half-an-hour, while they telegraphed 
to Umritsar for authority. So he waited and 
four constables came and grouped themselves 
picturesquely round him. Just as he was pre- 
paring to ask them to go away, the Station- 
Master said that he would give the Sahib a ticket 
to Umritsar, if the Sahib would kindly come 
inside the booking-office. Golightly stepped in- 
side, and the next thing he knew was that a con- 
stable was attached to each of his legs and arms, 
while the Station-Master was trying to cram a 
mail-bag over his head. 

There was a very fair scuffle all round the 
booking-office, and Golightly received a nasty 
cut over his eye through falling against a table. 
But the constables were too much for him, and 
they and the Station-Master handcuffed him se- 
curely. As soon as the mail-bag was slipped, he 
began expressing his opinions, and the head- 
constable said : — “ Without doubt this is the 
soldier-Englishman we required. Listen to the 
abuse ! " Then Golightly asked the Station- 
Master what the this and the that the proceed- 
ings meant. The Station-Master told him he 
was “ Private John Binkleof the Regiment, 


Arrest of Lieutenant Golightly 13 1 

5 ft. 9 in., fair hair, gray eyes, and a dissipated 
appearance, no marks on the body,” who had 
deserted a fortnight ago. Golightly began ex- 
plaining at great length : and the more he ex- 
plained the less the Station-Master believed him. 
He said that no Lieutenant could look such a 
ruffian as did Golightly, and that his instructions 
were to send his capture under proper escort to 
Umritsar. Golightly was feeling very damp 
I and uncomfortable, and the language he used 
I was not fit for publication, even in an expurgated 
| form. The four constables saw him safe to Um- 
ritsar in an “ intermediate ” compartment, and 
I he spent the four-hour journey in abusing them 
as fluently as his knowledge of the vernaculars 
allowed. 

At Umritsar he was bundled out on the plat- 
1 form into the arms of a Corporal and two men 

! of the Regiment. Golightly drew himself up 

j and tried to carry off matters jauntily. He did 
not feel too jaunty in handcuffs, with four con- 
i stables behind him, and the blood from the cut 
on his forehead stiffening on his left cheek. The 
Corporal was not jocular either. Golightly got 
i as far as : — “ This is a very absurd mistake, my 
men,” when the Corporal told him to “ stow his 
lip ” and come along. Golightly did not want 
to come along. He desired to stop and explain. 
He explained very well indeed, until the Corporal 
cut in with : — “ You a orficer ! It’s the like o' you 
as brings disgrace on the likes of us. Bloomin’ 
fine orficer you are ! I know your regiment. 
The Rogue’s March is the quickstep where you 
come from. You’re a black shame to the 
Service.” 

Golightly kept his temper, and began explain- 


132 Plain Tales From the Hills 

in g all over again from the beginning. Then he 
was marched out of the rain into the refresh- 
ment-room and told not to make a qualified fool 
of himself. The men were going to run him up 
to Fort Govindghar. And “ running up” is a 
performance almost as undignified as the Frog 
March. 

Golightly was nearly hysterical with rage and 
the chill and the mistake and the handcuffs and 
the headache that the cut on his forehead ha<J 
given him. He really laid himself out to ex- 
press what was in his mintf. When he had 
quite finished and his throat was feeling dry, 
one of the men said : — “ I’ve ’eard a few beggars 
in the click blind, stiff and crack on a bit ; but 
I’ve never ’eard anyone to touch this ere ‘ orfi- 
cer.’ ” They were not angry with him. They 
rather admired him. They had some beer at 
the refreshment-room, and offered Golightly 
some too, because he had “swore won’erful.” 
They asked him to tell them all about the adven- 
tures of Private John Binkle while he was loose 
on the country-side ; and that made Golightly 
wilder than ever. If he had kept his wits about 
him he would have kept quiet until an officer 
came ; but he attempted to run. 

Now the butt of a Martini in the small of your 
back hurts a great deal, and rotten, rain-soaked 
khaki tears easily when two men are yerking at 
your collar. 

Golightly rose from the floor feeling very sick 
and giddy, with his shirt ripped open all down 
his breast and nearly all down his back. He 
yielded to his luck, and at that point the down- 
train from Lahore came in carrying one of 
Golightly’s Majors. 


Arrest of Lieutenant Golightly 133 

This is the Major’s evidence in full : — 

There was the sound of a scuffle in the sec- 
ond-class refreshment-room, so I went in and 
saw the most villainous loafer that I ever set 
eyes on. His boots and breeches were plastered 
with mud and beer-stains. He wore a muddy- 
white dunghill sort of thing on his head, and it 
hung down in slips on his shoulders which were 
a good deal scratched. He was half in and half 
out of a shirt as nearly in two pieces as it could 
be, and he was begging the guard to look at the 
name on the tail of it. As he had rucked the 
shirt all over his head, I couldn’t at first see who 
he was, but I fancied that he was a man in the 
first stage of D. T. from the way he swore while 
he wrestled with his rags When he turned 
round, and I had made allowances for a lump 
as big as a pork-pie over one eye, and some 
green war-paint on the face, and some violet 
stripes round the neck, I saw that it was Go- 
lightly. He was very glad to see me,” said the 
Major, “ and he hoped I would not tell the Mess 
about it. 1 didn’t, but you can, if you like, now 
that Golightly has gone Home.” 

Golightly spent the greater part of that sum- 
mer in trying to get the Corporal and the two 
soldiers tried by Court-Martial for arresting an 
“ officer and a gentleman.” They were, of course, 
very sorry for their error. But the tale leaked 
into the regimental canteen, and thence ran 
about the Province. 


IN THE HOUSE OF SUDDHOO. 


A stone’s throw out on either hand 
From that well-ordered road we tread, 

And all the world is wild and strange ; 

Churel and ghoul and Djinn and sprite 
Shall bear us company to-night, 

For we have reached the Oldest Land 
Wherein the Powers of Darkness range. 

From the Dusk to the Dawn. 

The house of Suddhoo, near the Taksali Gate, 
is two storied, with four carved windows of old 
brown wood, and a flat roof. You may recog- 
nize it by five red hand-prints arranged like the 
Five of Diamonds on the whitewash between the 
upper windows. Bhagwan Dass, the bunnia, 
and a man who says he gets his living by seal- 
cutting live in the lower story with a troop of 
wives, servants, friends, and retainers. The two 
upper rooms used to be occupied by Janoo and 
Azizun and a little black-and-tan terrier that 
was stolen from an Englishman’s house and 
given to Janoo by a soldier. To-day, only Janoo 
lives in the upper rooms. Suddhoo sleeps on 
the roof generally, except when he sleeps in the 
street. He used to go to Peshawar in the cold 
weather to visit his son, who sells curiosities 
near the Edwardes’ Gate, and then he slept un- 
der a real mud roof. Suddhoo is a great friend 
of mine, because his cousin had a son who se- 
cured, thanks to my recommendation, the post 
of head-messenger to a big firm in the Station. 
Suddhoo says that God will make me a Lieuten- 
ant-Governor one of these days. I daresay his 
134 


In the House of Suddhoo 135 

prophecy will come true. He is very, very old, 
with white hair and no teeth worth showing, 
and he has outlived his wits — outlived nearly 
everything except his fondness for his son at 
Peshawar. Janoo and Azizun are Kashmiris, 
Ladies of the City, and theirs was an ancient and 
more or less honorable profession ; but Azizun 
has since married a medical student from the 
North-West and has settled down to a most re- 
spectable life somewhere near Bareilly. Bhag- 
wan Dass is an extortionate and an adulterator. 
He is very rich. The man who is supposed to 
get his living by seal-cutting pretends to be very 
poor. This lets you know as much as is neces- 
sary of the four principal tenants in the house 
of Suddhoo. Then there is Me, of course ; but 
I am only the chorus that comes in at the end to 
explain things. So I do not count. 

Suddhoo was not clever. The man who pre- 
tended to cut seals was the cleverest of them all 
— Bhagwan Dass only knew how to lie — except 
Janoo. She was also beautiful, but that was her 
own affair. 

Suddhoo’s son at Peshawar was attacked by 
pleurisy, and old Suddhoo was troubled. The 
seal-cutter man heard of Suddhoo’s anxiety and 
made capital out of it. He was abreast of the 
times. He got a friend in Peshawar to telegraph 
daily accounts of the son’s health. And here 
the story begins. 

Suddhoo’s cousin’s son told me, one evening, 
that Suddhoo wanted to see me ; that he was too 
old and feeble to come personally, and that I 
should be conferring an everlasting honor on the 
House of Suddhoo if I went to him. I went ; but 
I think, seeing how well-off Suddhoo was then, 


136 Plain Tales From the Hills 

that he might have sent something better than 
an ekka , which jolted fearfully, to haul out a 
future Lieutenant-Governor to the City on a 
muggy April evening. The ekka did not run 
quickly. It was full dark when we pulled up 
opposite the door of Ranjit Singh’s Tomb near 
the main gate of the Fort. Here was Suddhoo 
and he said that, by reason of my condescension, 
it was absolutely certain that I should become 
a Lieutenant-Governor while my hair was yet 
black. Then we talked about the weather and 
the state of my health, and the wheat crops, for 
fifteen minutes, in the Huzuri Bagh, under the 
stars. 

Suddhoo came to the point at last. He said 
Janoo had told him that there was an order of 
the Sirkar against magic, because it was feared 
that magic might one day kill the Empress of 
India. I didn’t know anything about the state 
of the law ; but I fancied that something interest- 
ing was going to happen. I said that so far 
from magic being discouraged by the Govern- 
ment it was highly commended. The greatest 
officials of the State practised it themselves. (If 
the Financial Statement isn’t magic, I don’t know 
what is.) Then, to encourage him further, I said 
that, if there was any jadoo afoot, I had not the 
least objection to giving it my countenance and 
sanction, and to seeing that it was clean jadoo — 
white magic, as distinguished from the unclean 
jadoo which kills folk. It took a long time be- 
fore Suddhoo admitted that this was just what 
he had asked me to come for. Then he told me, 
in jerks and quavers, that the man who said he 
cut seals was a sorcerer of the cleanest kind ; 
that every day he gave Suddhoo news of the sick 


In the House of Suddhoo 137 

son in Peshawar more quickly than the lightning 
could fly, and that this news was always corrob- 
orated by the letters. Further, that he had told 
Suddhoo how a great danger was threatening 
his son, which could be removed by clean jadoo j 
and, of course, heavy payment. I began to see 
exactly how the land lay, and told Suddhoo that 
/also understood a little jadoo in the Western 
line, and would go to his house to see that every- 
thing was done decently and in order. We set 
off together ; and on the way Suddhoo- told me 
that he had paid the seal-cutter between one hun- 
dred and two hundred rupees already ; and the 
jadoo of that night would cost two hundred more. 
Which was cheap, he said, considering the great- 
ness of his son’s danger ; but I do not think he 
meant it. 

The lights were all cloaked in the front of the 
house when we arrived. I could hear awful 
noises from behind the seal-cutter’s shop-front, as 
if some one were groaning his soul out. Suddhoo 
shook all over, and while we groped our way 
upstairs told me that the jadoo had begun. Janoo 
and Azizun met us at the stair-head, and told us 
that the jadoo - work was coming off in their 
rooms, because there was more space there. 
Janoo is a lady of a freethinking turn of mind. 
She whispered that the jadoo was an invention to 
get money out of Suddhoo, and that the seal- 
cutter would go to a hot place when he died. 
Suddhoo was nearly crying with fear and old 
age. He kept walking up and down the room in 
the half light, repeating his son’s name over and 
over again, and asking Azizun if the seal-cutter 
ought not to make a reduction in the case of his 
own landlord. Janoo pulled me over to the 


138 Plain Tales From the Hills 

shadow in the recess of the carved bow-windows. 
The boards were up, and the rooms were only 
lit by one tiny oil-lamp. There was no chance 
of my being seen if I stayed still. 

Presently, the groans below ceased, and we 
heard steps on the staircase. That was the seal- 
cutter. He stopped outside the door as the ter- 
rier barked and Azizun fumbled at the chain, and 
he told Suddhoo to blow out the lamp. This left 
the place in jet darkness, except for the red glow 
from the two huqas that belonged to Janoo and 
Azizun. The seal-cutter came in, and I heard 
Sudhoo throw himself down on the floor and 
groan. Azizun caught her breath, and Janoo 
backed on to one of the beds with a shudder. 
There was a clink of something metallic, and 
then shot up a pale blue-green flame near the 
ground. The light was just enough to show 
Azizun, pressed against one corner of the room 
with the terrier between her knees ; Janoo, with 
her hands clasped, leaning forward as she sat on 
the bed ; Suddhoo, face down, quivering, and the 
seal-cutter. 

I hope I may never see another man like that 
seal-cutter. He was stripped to the waist, with 
a wreath of white jasmine as thick as my wrist 
round his forehead, a salmon-colored loin-cloth 
round his middle, and a steel bangle on each 
ankle. This was not awe-inspiring. It was the 
face of the man that turned me cold. It was 
blue-gray in the first place. In the second, the 
eyes were rolled back till you could only see the 
whites of them ; and, in the third, the face was 
the face of a demon — a ghoul — anything you 
please except of the sleek, oily old ruffian who 
sat in the daytime over his turning-lathe down- 


In the House of Suddhoo 139 

stairs. He was lying on his stomach with his 
arms turned and crossed behind him, as if he had 
been thrown down pinioned. His head and neck 
were the only parts of him off the floor. They 
were nearly at right angles to the body, like the 
head of a cobra at spring. It was ghastly. In 
the center of the room, on the bare earth floor, 
stood a big, deep, brass basin, with a pale blue- 
green light floating in the center like a night- 
light. Round that basin the man on the floor 
wriggled himself three times. How he did it I 
do not know. I could see the muscles ripple 
along his spine and fall smooth again ; but I 
could not see any other motion. The head 
seemed the only thing alive about him, except 
that slow curl and uncurl of the laboring back- 
muscles. Janoo from the bed was breathing 
seventy to the minute ; Azizun held her hands 
before her eyes ; and old Suddhoo, fingering at 
the dirt that had got into his white beard, was 
crying to himself. The horror of it was that the 
creeping, crawly thing made no sound — only 
crawled ! And, remember, this lasted for ten 
minutes, while the terrier whined, and Azizun 
shuddered, and Janoo gasped, and Suddhoo 
cried. 

I felt the hair lift at the back of my head, and 
my heart thump like a thermantidote paddle. 
Luckily, the seal-cutter betrayed himself by his 
most impressive trick and made me calm again. 
After he had finished that unspeakable triple 
crawl, he stretched his head away from the floor 
as high as he could, and sent out a jet of fire 
from his nostrils. Now I knew how fire-spouting 
is done — I can do it myself — so I felt at ease. 
The business was a fraud. If he had only kept 


140 Plain Tales From the Hills 

to that crawl without trying to raise the effect, 
goodness knows what I might not have thought. 
Both the girls shrieked at the jet of fire and the 
head dropped, chin-down on the floor with a 
thud ; the whole body lying then like a corpse 
with its arms trussed. There was a pause of 
five full minutes after this, and the blue-green 
flame died down. Janoo stooped to settle one 
of her anklets, while Azizun turned her face to 
the wall and took the terrier in her arms. Sud- 
dhoo put out an arm mechanically to Janoo’s 
huqa , and she slid it across the floor with her 
foot. Directly above the body and on the wall, 
were a couple of flaming portraits, in stamped 
paper frames, of the Queen and the Prince of 
Wales. They looked down on the performance, 
and, to my thinking, seemed to heighten the 
grotesqueness of it all. 

Just when the silence was getting unendur- 
able, the body turned over and rolled away from 
the basin to the side of the room, where it lay 
stomach-up. There was a faint “ plop ” from 
the basin — exactly like the noise a fish makes 
when it takes a fly — and the green light in the 
center revived. 

I looked at the basin, and saw, bobbing in the 
water the dried, shriveled, black head of a na- 
tive baby — open eyes, open mouth and shaved 
scalp. It was worse, being so very sudden, than 
the crawling exhibition. We had no time to say 
anything before it began to speak. 

Read Poe’s account of the voice that came 
from the mesmerized dying man, and you will 
realize less than one-half of the horror of that 
head’s voice. 

There was an interval of a second or two be- 


In the House of Suddhoo 141 

tween each word, and a sort of “ ring, ring, ring,” 
in the note of the voice like the timber of a bell. 
It pealed slowly, as if talking to itself, for several 
minutes before I got rid of my cold sweat. Then 
the blessed solution struck me. I looked at the 
body lying near the doorway, and saw, just 
where the hollow of the throat joins on the 
shoulders, a muscle that had nothing to do with 
any man’s regular breathing, twitching away 
steadily. The whole thing was a careful repro- 
duction of the Egyptian teraphin that one reads 
about sometimes ; and the voice was as clever 
and as appalling a piece of ventriloquism as one 
could wish to hear. All this time the head was 
“ lip-lip-lapping ” against the side of the basin, 
and speaking. It told Suddhoo, on his face 
again whining, of his son’s illness and of the 
state of the illness up to the evening of that very 
night. I always shall respect the seal-cutter for 
keeping so faithfully to the time of the Peshawar 
telegrams. It went on to say that skilled doctors 
were night and day watching over the man’s 
life ; and that he would eventually recover if the 
fee to the potent sorcerer, whose servant was 
the head in the basin, were doubled. 

Here the mistake from the artistic point of 
view came in. To ask for twice your stipulated 
fee in a voice that Lazarus might have used 
when he rose from the dead, is absurd. Janoo, 
who is really a woman of masculine intellect, 
saw this as quickly as I did. I heard her say 
“ Ash nahin ! Fareib /” scornfully under her 
breath ; and just as she said so, the light in the 
basin died out, the head stopped talking, and we 
heard the room door creak on its hinges. Then 
Janoo struck a match, lit the lamp, and we saw 


142 Plain Tales From the Hills 

that head, basin, and seal-cutter were gone. 
Suddhoo was wringing his hands and explaining 
to any one who cared to listen, that, if his chances 
of eternal salvation depended on it, he could 
not raise another two hundred rupees. Azizun 
was nearly in hysterics in the corner ; while 
Janoo sat down composedly on one of the beds 
to discuss the probabilities of the whole thing 
being a bunao , or “make-up.” 

I explained as much as I knew of the seal- 
cutter’s way of jadoo ; but her argument was 
much more simple : — “ The magic that is always 
demanding gifts is no true magic,” said she. 
“ My mother told me that the only potent love- 
spells are those which are told you for love. 
This seal-cutter man is a liar and a devil. I 
dare not tell, do anything, or get anything done, 
because I am in debt to Bhagwan Dass the bun- 
nia for two gold rings and a heavy anklet. I 
must get my food from his shop.< The seal-cutter 
is the friend of Bhagwan Dass, and he would 
poison my food. A tool’s jadoo has been going 
on for ten days, and has cost Suddhoo many 
rupees each night. The seal-cutter used black 
hens and lemons and mantras before. He never 
showed us anything like this till to-night. Azizun 
is a fool, and will be a pur dahnashin soon. 
Suddhoo has lost his strength and his wits. See 
now ! I had hoped to get from Suddhoo many 
rupees while he lived, and many more after his 
death ; and behold, he is spending everything on 
that offspring of a devil and a she-ass, the seal- 
cutter ! ” 

Here I said: — “But what induced Suddhoo 
to drag me into the business ? Ot course I can 
speak to the seal-cutter, and he shall refund. 


In the House of Suddhoo 143 

The whole thing is child’s talk — shame — and 
senseless.” 

“ Suddhoo is an old child,” said Janoo. “ He 
has lived on the roofs these seventy years and is 
as senseless as a milch-goat. He brought you 
here to assure himself that he was not breaking 
any law of the Sirkar , whose salt he ate many 
years ago. He worships the dust off the feet of 
the seal-cutter, and that cow-devourer has for- 
bidden him to go and see his son. What does 
Suddhoo know of your laws or the lightning- 
post ? I have to watch his money going day by 
day to that lying beast below.” 

Janoo stamped her foot on the floor and nearly 
cried with vexation * while Suddhoo was whim- 
pering under a blanket in the corner, and Azizun 
was trying to guide the pipe-stem to his foolish 
old mouth. 

Now the case stands thus. Unthinkingly, I 
have laid myself open to the charge of aiding 
and abetting the seal-cutter in obtaining money 
under false pretences, which is forbidden by 
Section 420 of the Indian Penal Code. I am 
helpless in the matter for these reasons, I cannot 
‘inform the Police. What witnesses would sup- 
port my statements ? Janoo refuses flatly, and 
Azizun is a veiled woman somewhere near 
, Bareilly — lost in this big India of ours. I dare 
not again take the law into my own hands, and 
speak to the seal-cutter ; for certain am I that, 
not only would Suddhoo disbelieve me, but this 
step would end in the poisoning of Janoo, who is 
bound hand and foot by her debt to the bunnia. 
Suddhoo is an old dotard ; and whenever we 
meet mumbles my idiotic joke that the Sirkar 


144 Plain Tales From the Hills 

rather patronizes the Black Art than otherwise. 
His son is well now ; but Suddhoo is completely 
under the influence of the seal-cutter, by whose 
advice he regulates the affairs of his life. Janoo 
watches daily the money that she hoped to 
wheedle out of Suddhoo taken by the seal-cutter, 
and becomes daily more furious and sullen. 

She will never tell, because she dare not ; but, 
unless something happens to prevent her, I am 
afraid that the seal-cutter will die of cholera — 
the white arsenic kind — about the middle of 
May. And thus I shall have to be privy to a 
murder in the house of Suddhoo. 


HIS WEDDED WIFE. 


Cry “ Murder ! ” in the market-place, and each 
Will turn upon his neighbor anxious eyes 
That ask : — “ Art thou the man ? ” We hunted Cain, 
Some centuries ago, across the world, 

That bred the fear our own misdeeds maintain 
To-day. 

Vib art's Moralities. 

Shakespeare says something about worms, 
or it may be giants or beetles, turning if you 
tread on them too severely. The safest plan is 
never to tread on a worm — not even on the last 
new subaltern from Home, with his buttons 
hardly out of their tissue paper, and the red of 
sappy English beef in his cheeks. This is the 
story of the worm that turned. For the sake of 
brevity, we will call Henry Augustus Ramsay 
Faizanne, “ The Worm,” although he really was 
an exceedingly pretty boy, without a hair on his 
face, and with a waist like a girl’s, when he 
came out to the Second “ Shikarris ” and was 
made unhappy in several ways. The “Shikar- 
ris ” are a high-caste regiment, and you must be 
able to do things well — play a banjo, or ride 
more than little, or sing, or act — to get on with 
them. 

The Worm did nothing except fall off his pony, 
and knock chips out of gate-posts with his trap. 
Even that became monotonous after a time. He 
objected to whist, cut the cloth at billiards, sang 
out of tune, kept very much to himself, and wrote 
to his Mamma and sisters at Home. Four of 
these five things were vices which the “ Shikar- 
ris ” objected to and set themselves to eradicate, 
io 145 


146 Plain Tales From the Hills 

Every one knows how subalterns are, by brother- 
subalterns, softened and not permitted to be 
ferocious. It is good and wholesome, and does 
no one any harm, unless tempers are lost ; and 
then there is trouble. There was a man once — 
but that is another story. 

The “ Shikarris ” shikarred The Worm very 
much, and he bore everything without winking. 
He was so good and so anxious to learn, and 
flushed so pink, that his education was cut short, 
and he was left to his own devices by every one 
except the Senior Subaltern who continued to 
make life a burden to The Worm. The Senior 
Subaltern meant no harm ; but his chaff was 
coarse, and he didn’t quite understand where 
to stop. He had been waiting too long for his 
Company ; and that always sours a man. Also 
he was in love, which made him worse. 

One day, after he had borrowed The Worm’s 
trap for a lady who never existed, had used it 
himself all the afternoon, had sent a note to The 
Worm, purporting to come from the lady, and 
was telling the Mess all about it, The Worm 
rose in his place and said, in his quiet, lady-like 
voice : — “ That was a very pretty sell ; but I’ll 
lay you a month’s pay to a month’s pay when 
you get your step, that I work a sell on you that 
you’ll remember for the rest of your days, and 
the Regiment after you when you’re dead or 
broke,” The Worm wasn’t angry in the least, 
and the rest of the Mess shouted. Then the 
Senior Subaltern looked at The Worm from the 
boots upwards, and down again and said : 
“ Done, Baby.” The Worm took the rest of the 
Mess to witness that the bet had been taken, 
and retired into a book with a sweet smile. 


His Wedded Wife 147 

Two months passed, and the Senior Subaltern 
still educated The Worm, who began to move 
about a little more as the hot weather came on. 
I have said that the Senior Subaltern was in 
love. The curious thing is that a girl was in 
love with the Senior Subaltern. Though the 
Colonel said awful things, and the Majors 
snorted, and married Captains looked unuttera- 
ble wisdom, and the juniors scoffed, those two 
were engaged. 

The Senior Subaltern was so pleased with 
getting his Company and his acceptance at the 
same time that he forgot to bother The Worm. 
The girl was a pretty girl, and had money of her 
own. She does not come into this story at all. 

One night, at the beginning of the hot weather, 
all the Mess, except The Worm who had gone to 
his own room to write Home letters, were sitting 
on the platform outside the Mess House. The 
Band had finished playing, but no one wanted 
to go in. And the Captains’ wives were there 
also. The folly of a man in love is unlimited. 
The Senior Subaltern had been holding forth on 
the merits of the girl he was engaged to, and the 
ladies were purring approval, while the men 
yawned, when there was a rustle of skirts in the 
dark, and a tired, faint voice lifted itself. 

“ Where’s my husband ? ” 

I do not wish in the least to reflect on the mor- 
ality of the “ Shikarris ; ” but it is on record that 
four men jumped up as if they had been shot. 
Three of them were married men. Perhaps they 
were afraid that their wives had come from Home 
unbeknownst. The fourth said that he had acted 
on the impulse of the moment. He explained 
this afterwards. 


148 Plain Tales From the Hills 

Then the voice cried : — “ Oh Lionel ! ” Lionel 
was the Senior Subaltern’s name. A woman 
came into the little circle of light by the candles 
on the peg-tables, stretching out her hands to the 
dark where the Senior Subaltern was, and sob- 
bing. We rose to our feet, feeling that things 
were going to happen and ready to believe the 
worst. In this bad, small world of ours, one 
knows so little of the life of the next man — which, 
after all, is entirely his own concern — that one 
is not surprised when a crash comes. Anything 
might turn up any day for any one. Perhaps the 
Senior Subaltern had been trapped in his youth. 
Men are crippled that way occasionally. We 
didn’t know ; we wanted to hear ; and the Cap- 
tains’ wives were as anxious as we. If he had 
been trapped, he was to be excused ; for the 
woman from nowhere, in the dusty shoes and 
gray traveling dress, was very lovely, with black 
hair and great eyes full of tears. She was tall, 
with a fine figure, and her voice had a running 
sob in it pitiful to hear. As soon as the Senior 
Subaltern stood up, she threw her arms round 
his neck, and called him “ my darling,” and said 
she could not bear waiting alone in England, and 
his letters were so short and cold, and she was 
his to the end of the world, and would he forgive 
her ? This did not sound quite like a lady’s way 
of speaking. It was too demonstrative. 

Things seemed black indeed, and the Captains’ 
wives peered under their eyebrows at the Senior 
Subaltern, and the Colonel’s face set like the 
Day of Judgment framed in gray bristles, and no 
one spoke for awhile. 

Next the Colonel said, very shortly : — “ Well, 
Sir ? ” and the woman sobbed afresh. The 


His Wedded Wife 


149 


Senior Subaltern was half choked with the arms 
round his neck, but he gasped out : — “ It’s a 
d — d lie ! I never had a wife in my life ! ” 
“ Don’t swear,” said the Colonel. “Come into 
the Mess. We must sift this clear somehow,” 
and he sighed to himself, for he believed in his 
“ Shikarris,” did the Colonel. 

We trooped into the ante-room, under- the full 
lights, and there we saw how beautiful the 
woman was. She stood up in the middle of us 
all, sometimes choking with crying, then hard 
and proud, and then holding out her arms to the 
Senior Subaltern. It was like the fourth act of 
a tragedy. She told us how the Senior Subaltern 
had married her when he was Home on leave 
eighteen months before ; and she seemed to know 
all that we knew, and more too, of his people and 
his past life. He was white and ashy gray, 
trying now and again to break into the torrent 
of her words ; and we, noting how lovely she 
was and what a criminal he looked, esteemed 
him a beast of the worst kind. We felt sorry for 
him, though. 

I shall never forget the indictment of the Senior 
Subaltern by his wife. Nor will he. It was so 
sudden, rushing out of the dark, unannounced, 
into our dull lives. The Captains’ wives stood 
back ; but their eyes were alight, and you could 
see that they had already convicted and seri- 
tenced the Senior Subaltern. The Colonel 
seemed five years older. One Major was shad- 
ing his eyes with his hand and watching the 
woman from underneath it. Another was chew- 
ing his mustache and smiling quietly as if he 
were witnessing a play. Full in the open space 
in the center, by the whist-tables, the Senior Sub- 


150 Plain Tales From the Hills 

altern’s terrier was hunting for fleas. I remem- 
ber all this as clearly as though a photograph 
were in my hand. I remember the look of hor- 
ror on the Senior Subaltern’s face. It was rather 
like seeing a man hanged ; but much more in- 
teresting. Finally, the woman wound up by 
saying that the Senior Subaltern carried a double 
F. M. in tattoo on his left shoulder. We all 
knew that, and to our innocent minds it seemed 
to clinch the matter. But one of the Bachelor 
Majors said very politely : — “ I presume that 
your marriage-certificate would be more to the 
purpose ?*” 

That roused the woman.. She stood up and 
sneered at the Senior Subaltern for a cur, and 
abused the Major and the Colonel and all the 
rest. Then she wept, and then she pulled a 
paper from her breast, saying imperially ; — 
“ Take that ! And let my husband — my lawfully 
wedded husband — read it aloud — if he dare ! ” 

There was a hush, and the men looked into each 
other’s eyes as the Senior Subaltern came for- 
ward in a dazed and dizzy way, and took the 
paper. We were wondering, as we stared, 
whether there was anything against any one of 
us that might turn up later on. The Senior 
Subaltern’s throat was dry ; but, as he ran his 
eve over the paper, he broke out into a hoarse 
cackle of relief, and said to the woman : — “You 
young blackguard ! ” 

But the woman had fled through a door, and 
on the paper was written “ This is to certify that 
I, The Worm, have paid in full my debts to the 
Senior Subaltern, and, further, that the Senior 
Subaltern is my debtor, by agreement on the 
23d of February, as by the Mess attested, to the 


His Wedded Wife 151 

extent of one month’s Captain’s pay, in the law- 
ful currency of the India Empire.” 

Then a deputation set off for the Worm’s quar- 
ters and found him, betwixt and between, un- 
lacing his stays, with the hat, wig, serge dress, 
etc., on the bed. He came over as he was, and 
the “ Shikarris ” shouted till the Gunners’ Mess 
sent over to know if they might have a share of 
the fun. I think we were all, except the Colonel 
and the Senior Subaltern, a little disappointed 
that the scandal had come to nothing. But that 
is human nature. There could be no two words 
about The Worm’s acting. — It leaned as near to 
a nasty tragedy as anything this side of a joke 
can. When most of the Subalterns sat upon him 
with sofa-cushions to find out why he had not 
said that acting was his strong point, he answered 
very quietly : — “ I don’t think you ever asked me. 
I used to act at Home with my sisters.” But no 
acting with girls could account for The Worm’s 
display that night. Personally, I think it was in 
bad taste. Besides being dangerous. There is 
on sort ot use in playing with fire, even for fun. 

The “Shikarris” made him President of the 
Regimental Dramatic Club ; and, when the 
Senior Subaltern paid up his debt, which he did 
at once, The Worm sank the money in scenery 
and dresses. He was a good Worm ; and the 
“ Shikarris ” are proud of him. The only draw- 
back is that he has been christened “ Mrs. Senior 
Subaltern ; ” and, as there are now two Mrs. 
Senior Subalterns in the Station, this is some- 
times confusing to strangers. 

Later on, I will tell you of a case something 
like this, but with all the jest left out and noth- 
ing in it but real trouble. 


THE BROKEN-LINK HANDICAP. 


While the snaffle holds, or the “ long-neck ” stings, 

While the big beam tilts, or the last bell rings, 

While horses are horses to train or to race, 

Then women and wine take a second place 
For me — for me — 

While a short “ ten-three ” 

Has a field to squander or fence to face ! 

Song of the G. R. 

There are more ways of running a horse to 
suit your book than pulling his head off in the 
straight. Some men forget this. Understand 
clearly that all racing is rotten — as everything 
connected with losing money must be. Out 
here, in addition to its inherent rottenness, it 
has the merit of being two-thirds sham ; looking 
pretty on paper only. Every one knows every 
one else far too well for business purposes. 
How on earth can you rack and harry and post 
a man for his losings, when you are fond of his 
wife, and live in the same Station with him ? 
He says, “ on the Monday following,” “ I can’t 
settle just yet.” You say, “ All right, old man,” 
and think yourself lucky if you pull off nine 
hundred out of a two-thousand-rupee »debt. 
Anyway you look at it, Indian racing is im- 
moral, and expensively immoral. Which is 
much worse. If a man wants your money, he 
ought to ask for it, or send round a subscription 
list, instead of juggling about the country, with 
an Australian larrikin; a “brumby,” with as 
much breed as the boy ; a brace of chumars in 
gold-laced caps ; three or four ekka - ponies with 
hogged manes, and a switch-tailed demirep of a 

* 5 2 


The Broken-Link Handicap 153 

mare called Arab because she has a kink in her 
flag. Racing leads to the shroff quicker than 
anything else. But if you have no conscience 
and no sentiments, and good hands, and some 
knowledge of pace, and ten years’ experience of 
horses, and several thousand rupees a month, I 
believe that you can occasionally contrive to pay 
your shoeing-bills. 

Did you ever know Shackles — b. w. g., 15. 
13-8 — coarse, loose, mule-like ears — barrel as 
long as a gatepost — tough as a telegraph-wire — 
and the queerest brute that ever looked through 
a bridle ? He was of no brand, being one of an 
ear-nicked mob taken into the Bucephalus at 
^4 -ioj. a head to make up freight, and sold raw 
and out of condition at Calcutta for Rs. 275. 
People who lost money on him called him a 
“ brumby ; ” but if ever any horse had Harpoon’s 
shoulders and The Gin’s temper, Shackles was 
that horse. Two miles was his own particular 
distance. He trained himself, ran himself, 
and rode himself ; and, if his jockey insulted 
him by giving him hints he shut up at once 
and bucked the boy off. He objected to dicta- 
tion. Two or three of his owners did not under- 
stand this, and lost money in consequence. 
At last he was bought by a man who discovered 
that, if a race was to be won, Shackles, and 
Shackles only, would win it in his own way, so 
long as his jockey sat still. This man had a rid- 
ing-boy called Brunt — a lad from Perth, West 
Australia — and he taught Brunt with a trainer’s 
whip, the hardest thing a jockey can learn — 
to sit still, to sit still, and to keep on sitting 
still. When Brunt fairly grasped this truth, 
Shackles devastated the country. No weight 


154 Plain Tales From the Hills 

could stop him at his own distance ; and the 
fame of Shackles spread from Ajmir in the South, 
to Chedputter in the North. There was no horse 
like Shackles, so long as he was allowed to do 
his work in his own way. But he was beaten in 
the end ; and the story of his fall is enough to 
make angels weep. 

At the lower end of the Chedputter race- 
course, just before the turn into the straight, the 
track passes close to a couple of old brick-mounds 
enclosing a funnel-shaped hollow. The big end 
of the funnel is not six feet from the railings on 
the off-side. The astounding peculiarity of the 
course is that, if you stand at one particular 
place, about half a mile away, inside the course, 
and speak at ordinary pitch, your voice just hits 
the funnel of the brick mounds and makes a curi- 
ous whining echo there. A man discovered this 
one morning by accident while out training with 
a friend. He marked the place to stand and 
speak from with a couple of bricks, and he kept 
his knowledge to himself. Every peculiarity of 
a course is worth remembering in a country 
where rats play the mischief with the elephant- 
litter, and Stewards build jumps to suit their own 
stables. This man ran a very fairish country- 
bred, a long, racking high mare with the temper 
of a fiend, and the paces of an airy wandering 
seraph — a drifty, glidy stretch. The mare was, 
as a delicate tribute to Mrs. Reiver, called “ The 
Lady Regula Baddun ” — or for short, Regula 
Baddun. 

Shackles’ jockey, Brunt, was a quiet-well be- 
haved boy, but his nerve had been shaken. He 
began his career by riding jump races in Mel- 
bourne, where a few Stewards want lynching, 


The Broken-Link Handicap 155 

and was one of the jockeys who came through 
the awful butchery — perhaps you will recollect it 
— of the Maribyrnong Plate. The walls were 
colonial ramparts — logs of jarrah spiked into 
masonry — with wings as strong as Church but- 
tresses. Once in his stride, a horse had to jump 
or fall. He couldn’t run out. In the Maribyr- 
nong Plate, twelve horses were jammed at the 
second wall. Red Hat, leading, fell this side, 
and threw out the Glen, and the ruck came up 
behind and the space between wing and wing 
was one struggling, screaming, kicking sham- 
bles. Four jockeys were taken out dead ; three 
were very badly hurt, and Brunt was among the 
three. He told the story of the Maribyrnong 
Plate sometimes ; and when he described how 
Whalley on Red Hat, said, as the man fell under 
him : — “ God ha’ mercy, I’m done for ! ” and 
how, next instant, Sithee There and White Otter 
had crushed the life out of poor Whalley, and 
the dust hid a small hell of men and horses, no 
one marveled that Brunt had dropped jump- 
races and Australia together. Regula Baddun’s 
owner knew that story by heart. Brunt never 
varied it in the telling. He had no education. 

Shackles came to the Chedputter Autumn 
races one year, and his owner walked about in- 
sulting the sportsmen of Chedputter generally, 
till they went to the Honorary Secretary in a 
body and said : — 44 Appoint Handicappers, and 
arrange a race which shall break Shackles and 
humble the pride of his owner.” The Districts 
rose against Shackles and sent up of their best ; 
Ousel who was supposed to be able to do his 
mile in 1-53 ; Petard, the stud-bred, trained by a 
cavalry regiment who knew how to train ; Grin- 


156 Plain Tales From the Hills 

galet, the ewe-lamb of the 75th ; Bobolink, the 
pride of Peshawar ; and many others. 

They called that race The Broken-Link Handi- 
cap, because it was to smash Shackles ; and the 
handicappers piled on the weights, and the Fund 
gave eight hundred rupees, and the distance was 
“ round the course for all horses.” Shackles’ 
owner said : — “ You can arrange the race with 
regard to Shackles only. So long as you don’t 
bury him under weight-cloths, I don’t mind.” 
“ Regula Baddun’s owner said : — “ I throw in 
my mare to fret Ousel. Six furlongs is Regula’s 
distance, and she will then lie down and die. 
So also will Ousel, for his jockey doesn’t under- 
stand a waiting race.” Now, this was a lie, for 
Regula had been in work for two months at 
Dehra, and her chances were good, always sup- 
posing that Shackles broke a blood-vessel — or 
Brunt moved on him. 

The plunging in the lotteries was fine. They 
filled eight thousand-rupee lotteries on the 
Broken-link Handicap, and the account in the 
Pioneer said that “ favoritism was divided.” In 
plain English, the various contingents were wild 
on their respective horses ; for the Handicappers 
had done their work well. The Honorary 
Secretary shouted himself hoarse through the 
din ; and the smoke of the cheroots were like the 
smoke, and the rattling of the dice-boxes like the 
rattle of small-arm fire. 

Ten horses started — very level — and Regula 
Baddun’s owner cantered out on his hack to a 
place inside the circle of the course, where two 
bricks had been thrown. He faced towards the 
brick-mounds at the lower end of the course and 
waited. 


The Broken-Link Handicap 157 

The story of the running is in the Pioneer. 
At the end of the first mile, Shackles crept out 
of the ruck, well on the outside, ready to get 
round the turn, lay hold of the bit and spin up 
the straight before the others knew he had got 
away. Brunt was sitting still, perfectly happy, 
listening to the “ drum , drum, drum ” of the 
hoofs behind, and knowing that, in about twenty 
strides. Shackles would draw one deep breath 
and go up the last half-mile like the “Flying 
Dutchman.” As Shackles went short to take 
the turn and came abreast of the brick-mound, 
Brunt heard, above the noise of the wind in his 
ears, a whining, wailing voice on the offside, 
saying : — “ God ha’ mercy, I’m done for ! ” In 
one stride, Brunt saw the whole seething smash 
of the Maribyrnong Plate before him, started in 
his saddle and gave a yell of terror. The start 
brought the heels into Shackles 1 side, and the 
scream hurt Shackles’ feelings. He couldn’t 
stop dead ; but he put out his feet and slid along 
for fifty yards, and then, very gravely and judi- 
cially, bucked off Brunt — a shaking, terror- 
stricken lump, while Regula Baddun made a 
neck-and-neck race with Bobolink up the straight, 

' and won by a short head — Petard a bad third. 
Shackles’ owner, in the Stand, tried to think that 
his field-glasses had gone wrong. Regula 
Baddun’s owner, waiting by the two bricks, gave 
one deep sigh of relief, and cantered back to the 
Stand. He had won, in lotteries and bets, about 
fifteen thousand. 

It was a Broken-link Handicap with a venge- 
ance. It broke nearly all the men concerned, 
and nearly broke the heart of Shackles’ owner. 
He went down to interview Brunt. The boy 


158 Plain Tales From the Hills 

lay, livid and gasping with fright, where he had 
tumbled off. The sin of losing the race never 
seemed to strike him, All he knew was that 
Whalley had “ called ” him, that the “ call ” was 
a warning ; and, were he cut in two for it, he 
would never get up again. His nerve had gone 
altogether, and he only asked his master to give 
him a good thrashing, and let him go. He was 
fit for nothing, he said. He got his dismissal, 
and crept up to the paddock, white as chalk, 
with blue lips, his knees giving way under him. 
People said nasty things in the paddock ; but 
Brunt never heeded. He changed into tweeds, 
took his stick and went down the road, still 
shaking with fright, and muttering over and over 
again: — “God ha’ mercy, I’m done for!” To 
the best of my knowledge and belief he spoke 
the truth. 

So now you know how the Broken-link Handi- 
cap was run and won. Of course you don’t 
believe it. You would credit anything about 
Russia’s designs on India, or the recommenda- 
tions of the Currency Commission ; but a little 
bit of sober fact is more then you can stand. 


BEYOND THE PALE. 


“ Love heeds not caste nor sleep a broken bed. I went in search 
of love and lost myself.” 

H indu Proverb. 

A MAN should, whatever happens, keep to his 
own caste, race and breed. Let the White go 
to the White and the Black to the Black. Then, 
whatever trouble tails is in the ordinary course 
of things — neither sudden, alien nor unexpected. 

This is the story of a man who wilfully stepped 
beyond the safe limits of decent every-day society, 
and paid for it heavily. 

He knew too much in the first instance ; and 
he saw too much in the second. He took too 
deep an interest in native life ; but he will never 
do so again. 

Deep away in the heart of the City, behind 
Jitha Megji’s bustee , lies Amir Nath’s Gully, 
which ends in a dead-wall pierced by one grated 
window. At the head of the Gully is a big cow- 
byre, and the walls on either side of the Gully 
are without windows. Neither Suchet Singh nor 
Gaur Chand approve of their women-folk looking 
into the world, If Durga Charan had been of 
their opinion, he would have been a happier man 
to-day, and little Bisesa would have been able to 
knead her own bread. Her room looked out 
through the grated window into the narrow dark 
Gully where the sun never came and where the 
buffaloes wallowed in the blue slime. She was 
a widow, about fifteen years old, and she prayed 
the Gods, day and night, to send her a lover ; 
for she did not approve of living alone. 

*59 


160 Plain Tales From the Hills 


One day, the man — Trejago his name was — 
came into Amir Nath’s Gully on an aimless 
wandering ; and, after he had passed the buf- 
faloes, stumbled over a big heap of cattle-food. 

Then he saw that the Gully ended in a trap, 
and heard a little laugh from behind the grated 
window. It was a pretty little laugh, and Tre- 
jago, knowing that, for all practical purposes, 
the old Arabian Nights are good guides, went 
forward to the window, and whispered that verse 
of “The Love Song of Har Dyal” which be- 
gins : — 

Can a man stand upright in the face of the naked 
Sun ; or a Lover in the Presence of his Beloved ? 

If my feet fail me, O Heart of my Heart, am I to 
blame, being blinded by the glimpse of your beauty? 

There carnet he faint tchinks of a woman’s 
bracelets from behind the grating, and a little 
voice went on with the song at the fifth verse : — 

Alas ! alas ! Can the Moon tell the Lotus of her 
love when the Gate of Heaven is shut and the clouds 
gather for the rains ? 

They have taken my Beloved, and driven her with 
the pack-horses to the North. 

There are iron chains on the feet that were set on my 
heart. 

Call to the bowmen to make ready 

The voice stopped suddenly, and Trejago 
walked out of Amir Nath’s Gully, wondering who 
in the world could have capped “ The Love Song 
of Har Dyal ” so neatly. 

Next morning, as he was driving to office, an 
old' woman threw a packet into his dog-cart. In 
the packet was the half of a broken glass-bangle, 
one flower of the blood-red dhak , a pinch of 


Beyond the Pale 161 

bhusa or cattle-food, and eleven cardamoms. 
That packet was a letter — not a clumsy com- 
promising letter, but an innocent unintelligible 
lover’s epistle. 

Trejago knew far too much about these things, 
as I have said. No Englishman should be able 
to translate object-letters. But Trejago spread 
all the trifles on the lid of his office-box and be- 
gan to puzzle them out. 

A broken glass-bangle stands for a Hindu 
widow all India over ; because, when her hus-. 
band dies, a woman’s bracelets are broken o*i 
her wrists. Trejago saw the meaning of the 
little bit of the glass. The flower of the dhak 
means diversely “ desire,” “ come,” “ write,” or 
“ danger,” according to the other things with it. 
One cardamom means "jealousy;” but when 
any article is duplicated in an object-letter, it 
loses its symbolic meaning and stands merely 
for one of a number indicating time, or, if in- 
cense, curds, or saffron be sent also, place. The 
message ran then : — " A widow — dhak flower 
and bhusa — at eleven o’clock.” The pinch of 
bhusa enlightened Trejago. He saw — this kind 
of letter leaves much to instinctive knowledge — 
that the bhusa referred to the big heap of cattle- 
food over which he had fallen in Amir Nath’s 
Gully, and that the message must come from the 
person behind the grating ; she being a widow. 
So the message ran then : — " A widow, in the 
Gully in which is the heap of bhusa, desires you 
to come at eleven o’clock.” 

Trejago threw all the rubbish into the fire- 
place and laughed. He knew that men in the 
East do not make love under windows at eleven 
in the forenoon, nor do women fix appointments 
II 


162 Plain Tales From the Hills 


a week in advance. So he went, that very night 
at eleven, into Amir Nath’s Gully, clad in a 
boorka, which cloaks a man as well as a woman. 
Directly the gongs in the City made the hour, 
the little voice behind the grating took up “The 
Love Song of Har Dyal ” at the verse where the 
Panthan girl calls upon Har Dyal to return. 
The song is really pretty in the Vernacular. In 
English you miss the wail of it. It runs some- 
thing like this : — 

Alone upon the housetops, to the North 
I turn and watch the lightning in the sky, — 

The glamour of thy footsteps in the North, 

Come back to me , Beloved , or I die ! 

Below my feet the still bazar is laid 
Far, far below the weary camels lie, — 

The camels and the captives of thy raid, 

Come back to me, Beloved, or I die ! 

My father’s wife is old and harsh with years, 

And drudge of all my father’s house am I. — 

My bread is sorrow and my drink is tears, 

Come back to me, Beloved, or I die l 


As the song stopped, Trejago stepped up un- 
der the grating and whispered : — “ I am here.” 

Bisesa was good to look upon. 

That night was the beginning of many strange 
things, and of a double life so wild that Trejago 
to-day sometimes wonders if it were not all a 
dream. Bisesa or her old handmaiden who had 
thrown the object-letter had detached the heavy 
grating from the brick-work of the wall ; so that 
the window slid inside, leaving only a square of 
raw masonry into which an active man might 
climb. 

In the day-time, Trejago drove through his 
routine of office-work, or put on his calling- 


Beyond the Pale 163 

clothes and called on the ladies of the Station ; 
wondering how long they would know him if 
they knew of poor little Bisesa. At night, when 
all the city was still, came the walk under the 
evil-smelling boorka , the patrol through Jitha 
Megji’s bustee , the quick turn into Amir Nath’s 
Gully between the sleeping cattle and the dead 
walls, and then, last of all, Bisesa, and the deep, 
even breathing of the old woman who slept out- 
side the door of the bare little room that Durga 
Charan allotted to his sister’s daughter. Who 
or what Durga Charan was, Trejago never in- 
quired ; and why in the world he was not dis- 
covered and knifed never occurred to him till 

his madness was over, and Bisesa But 

this comes later. 

Bisesa was an endless delight to Trejago. 
She was as ignorant as a bird ; and her distorted 
versions of the rumors from the outside world 
that had reached her in her room, amused Tre- 
jago almost as much as her lisping attempts to 
pronounce his name — “Christopher.” The first 
syllable was always more than she could manage, 
and she made funny little gestures with her rose- 
leaf hands, as one throwing the name away, and 
then, kneeling before Trejago asked him, exactly 
as an English woman would do, if he were sure 
he loved her. Trejago swore that he loved her 
more than any one else in the world. Which 
was true. 

After a month of this folly, the exigencies of 
his other life compelled Trejago to be especially 
attentive to a lady of his acquaintance. You 
may take it for a fact that anything of this kind 
is not only noticed and discussed by a man’s 
own race but by some hundred and fifty natives 


164 Plain Tales From the Hills 

as well. Trejago had to walk with this lady and 
talk to her at the Band-stand, and once or twice 
to drive with her ; never for an instant dreaming 
that this would affect his dearer out-of-the-way 
life. But the news flew, in the usual mysterious 
fashion, from mouth to mouth, till Bisesa’s duenno 
heard of it and told Bisesa. The child k was so 
troubled that she did the household work evilly, 
and was beaten by Durga Charan’s wife in con- 
sequence. 

A . week later, Bisesa taxed Trejago with the 
flirtation. She understood no gradations and 
spoke openly. Trejago laughed and Bisesa 
stamped her little feet — little feet light as mari- 
gold flowers, that could lie in the palm of a man’s 
one hand. 

Much that is written about “ Oriental passion 
and impulsiveness ” is exaggerated and compiled 
at second-hand, but a little of it is true ; and 
when an Englishman finds that little, it is quite 
as startling as any passion in his own proper 
life. Bisesa, raged and stormed, and finally 
threatened to kill herself if Trejago did not at 
once drop the alien Memsahib who had come 
between them. Trejago tried to explain, and 
to show her that she did not understand these 
things from a Western standpoint. Bisesa drew 
herself up, and said simply : — 

“ I do not. I know only this — it is not good 
that I should have made you dearer than my 
own heart to me, Sahib. You are an English- 
man. I am only a black girl — ” she was fairer 
than bar-gold in the Mint, — » and the widow of 
a black man.” 

Then she sobbed and said : “ But on my soul 

and my Mother’s soul, I love you. There shall 


Beyond the Pale 165 

no harm come to you, whatever happens to 
me. 

Trejago argued with the child, and tried to 
soothe her, but she seemed quite unreasonably 
disturbed. Nothing would satisfy her save that 
all relations between them should end. He was 
to go away at once. And he went. As he 
dropped out at the window, she kissed his fore- 
head twice, and he walked home wondering. 

A week, and then three weeks, passed without 
a sign from Bisesa. Trejago, thinking that the 
rupture had lasted quite long enough, went down 
to Amir Nath’s Gully for the fifth time in the 
three weeks, hoping that his rap at the sill of the 
shifting grating would be answered. He was 
not disappointed. 

There was a young moon, and one stream of 
light fell down into Amir Nath’s Gully, and 
struck the grating which was drawn away as he 
knocked. From the black dark, Bisesa held out 
her arms into the moonlight. Both hands had 
been cut off at the wrists, and the stumps were 
nearly healed. 

Then, as Bisesa bowed her head between her 
arms and sobbed, some one in the room grunted 
like a wild beast, and something sharp, — knife, 
sword or spear, — thrust at Trejago in his boorka . 
The stroke missed his body, but cut into one of 
the muscles of the groin, and he limped slightly 
from the wound for the rest of his days. 

The grating went into its place. There was 
no sign whatever from inside the house, — noth- 
ing but the moonlight strip on the high wall, and 
the blackness of Amir Nath’s Gully behind. 

The next thing Trejago remembers, after rag- 
ing and shouting like a madman between those 


166 Plain Tales From the Hills 


pitiless walls, is that he found himself near the 
river as the dawn was breaking, threw away his 
booraka and went home bareheaded. 

What the tragedy was — whether Bisesa had, 
in a tit of causeless despair, told everything, or 
the intrigue had been discovered and she tor- 
tured to tell ; whether Durga Charan knew his 
name and what became of Bisesa — Trejagodoes 
not know to this day. Something horrible had 
happened, and the thought oi what it must have 
been, comes upon Trejago in the night now and 
again, and keeps him company till the morning. 
One special feature of the case is that he does 
not know where lies the front of Durga Charan’s 
house. It may open on to a courtyard common 
to two or more houses, or it may lie behind any 
one of the gates of Jitha Megji’s bustee. Tre- 
jago cannot tell. He cannot get Bisesa — poor 
little Bisesa — back again. He has lost her in 
the City where each man’s house is as guarded 
and as unknowable as the grave • and the grat- 
ing that opens into Amir Nath’s Gully has been 
walled up. 

But Trejago pays his calls regularly, and is 
reckoned a very decent sort of man. 

There is nothing peculiar about him, except a 
slight stiffness, caused by a riding-strain, in the 
right leg. 


IN ERROR. 


They burnt a corpse upon the sand— 

The light shone out afar ; 

It guided home the plunging boats 
That beat from Zanzibar. 

Spirit of Fire, where’er Thy altars rise, 

Thou art Light of Guidance to our eyes. 

Salsette Boat-Song. 

There is hope for a man who gets publicly 
and riotously drunk more often than he ought to 
do ; but there is no hope for the man who drinks 
secretly and alone in his own house — the man 
who is never seen to drink. 

This is a rule ; so there must be an exception 
to prove it. Moriarty’s case was that exception. 

He was a Civil Engineer, and the Government 
very kindly, put him quite by himself in an out- 
district, with nobody but natives to talk to and a 
great deal of work to do. He did his work well 
in the four years he was utterly alone ; but he 
picked up the vice of secret and solitary drink- 
ing, and came up out of the wilderness more old 
and worn and haggard than the dead-alive life 
had any right to make him. You know the 
saying that a man who has been alone in the 
jungle for more than a year is never quite sane 
all his life after. People credited Moriarty’s 
queerness of manner and moody ways to the soli- 
tude, and said that it showed how Government 
spoilt the futures of its best men. Moriarty had 
built himself the plinth of a very good reputation 
in the bridge-dam-girder line. But he knew, 
every night of the week, that he was taking steps 

167 


168 Plain Tales From the Hills 


to undermine that reputation with L. L. L. and 
“Christopher” and little nips of liqueurs, and 
filth of that kind. He had a sound constitution 
and a great brain, or else he would have broken 
down and died like a sick camel in the district, 
as better men have done before him. 

Government ordered him to Simla after he had 
come out of the desert ; and he went up mean- 
ing to try for a post then vacant. That season, 
Mrs. Reiver — perhaps you will remember her — 
was in the height of her power, and many men 
lay under her yoke. Everything bad that could 
be said has already been said about Mrs. Reiver, 
in another tale. Moriarty was heavily-built and 
handsome, very quiet and nervously anxious to 
please his neighbors when he wasn’t sunk in a 
brown study. He started a good deal at sudden 
noises or if spoken to without warning ; and, 
when you watched him drinking his glass of 
water at dinner, you could see the hand shake a 
little. But all this was put down to nervousness, 
and the quiet, steady “ sip-sip-sip, fill and sip- 
sip-sip, again,” that went on in his own room 
when he was by himself, was never known. 
Which was miraculous, seeing how everything 
in a man’s private life is public property out here. 

Moriarty was drawn, not into Mrs. Reiver’s 
set, because they were not his sort, but into the 
power of Mrs. Reiver, and he fell down in front 
of her and made a goddess of her. This was 
due to his coming fresh out of the jungle to a 
big town. He could not scale things properly or 
see who was what. 

Because Mrs. Reiver was cold and hard, he 
said she was stately and dignified. Because she 
had no brains, and could not talk cleverly, he 


In Error 


169 

said she was reserved and shy. Mrs. Reiver 
shy t ! Because she was unworthy of honor or 
reverence from any one, he reverenced her from 
a distance and dowered her with all the virtues 
in the Bible and most of those in Shakespeare. 

This big, dark, abstracted man who was so 
nervous when a pony cantered behind him, used 
to moon in the train of Mrs. Reiver, blushing 
with pleasure when she threw a word or two his 
way. His admiration was strictly platonic : 
even other women saw and admitted this. He 
did not move out in Simla, so he heard nothing 
against his idol : which was satisfactory. Mrs. 
Reiver took no special notice of him, beyond see- 
ing that he was added to her list of admirers, 
and going for a walk with him now and then, 
just to show that he was her property, claimable 
as such. Moriarty must have done most ol the 
talking, for Mrs. Reiver couldn’t talk much to a 
man of his stamp ; and the little she said could 
not have been profitable. What Moriarty be- 
lieved in, as he had good reason to, was Mrs. 
Reiver’s influence over him, and, in that belief, 
set himself seriously to try to do away with the 
vice that only he himself knew of. 

His experiences while he was fighting with it 
must have been peculiar, but he never described 
them. Sometimes he would hold off from every- 
thing except water for a week. Then, on a rainy 
night, when no one had asked him out to dinner, 
and there was a big fire in his room, and every- 
thing comfortable, he would sit down and make 
a big night of it by adding little nip to little nip, 
planning big schemes of reformation meanwhile, 
until he threw himself on his bed hopelessly 
drunk. He suffered next morning. 


iyo Plain Tales From the Hills 

One night, the big crash came. He was 
troubled in his own mind over his attempts to 
make himself “ worthy of the friendship ” of Mrs. 
Reiver. The past ten days had been very bad 
ones, and the end ot it all was that he received 
the arrears of two and three quarter years of 
sipping in one attack of delirium trejnens of the 
subdued kind ; beginning with suicidal depres- 
sion, going on to fits and starts and hysteria, and 
ending with downright raving. As he sat in a 
chair in front of the fire, or walked up and down 
the room picking a handkerchief to pieces, you 
heard what poor Moriarty really thought ofMrs. 
Reiver, for he raved about her and his own fall 
for the most part ; though he raveled some P. 
W. D. accounts into the same skein of thought. 
He talked and talked, and talked in a low dry 
whisper to himself, and there was no stopping 
him. He seemed to know that there was some- 
thing wrong, and twice tried to pull himself to- 
gether and confer rationally with the Doctor ; 
but his mind ran out of control at once, and he 
fell back to a whisper and the story of his 
troubles. It is terrible to hear a big man bab- 
bling like a child of all that a man usually locks 
up, and puts away in the deep of his heart. 
Moriarty read out his very soul for the benefit of 
any one who was in the room between ten-thirty 
that night and two-forty-five next morning. 

From what he said, one gathered how im-» 
mense an influence Mrs. Reiver held over him, 
and how thoroughly he felt for his own lapse! 
His whisperings cannot, of course, be put down 
here ; but they were very instructive as showing 
the errors of his estimates. 


In Error 


171 

When the trouble was over, and his few ac- 
quaintances were pitying him for the bad attack 
of jungle-fever that had so pulled him down, 
Moriarty swore a big oath to himself and went 
abroad again with Mrs. Reiver till the end of 
the season, adoring her in a quiet and deferential 
way as an angel from heaven. Later on he took 
to riding — not hacking but honest riding — which 
was good proof that he was improving, and you 
could slam doors behind him without his jumping 
to his feet with a gasp. That, again, was hopeful. 

How he kept his oath, and what it cost him 
in the beginning nobody knows. He certainly 
managed to compass the hardest thing that a man 
who has drunk heavily can do. He took his peg 
and wine at dinner ; but he never drank alone, 
and never let what he drank have the least hold 
on him. 

Once he told a bosom-friend the story of his 
great trouble, and how the “ influence of a pure 
honest woman, and an angel as well ” had saved 
him. When the man — startled at anything good 
being laid to Mrs. Reiver’s door — laughed, it 
cost him Moriarty ’s friendship. Moriarty who 
is married now to a woman ten thousand times 
better than Mrs. Reiver — a woman who believes 
that there is no man on earth as good and clever 
as her husband — will go down to his grave vow- 
ing and protesting that Mrs. Reiver saved him 
from ruin in both worlds. 

That she knew anything of Moriarty ’s weak- 
ness nobody believed for a moment. That she 
would have cut him dead, thrown him over, and 
acquainted all her friends with her discovery, if 
she had known of it, nobody who knew her 
douhted for an instant. 


172 Plain Tales From the Hills 

Moriarty thought her something she never 
was, and in that belief saved himself. Which 
was just as good as though she had been every- 
thing that he had imagined. 

But the question is, what claim will Mrs. 
Reiver have to the credit of Moriarty ’s salva- 
tion, when her day of reckoning comes ? 


» 


A BANK FRAUD. 


He drank strong waters and his speech was coarse ; 

He purchased raiment, and forebore to pay ; 

He struck a trusting junior with a horse, 

And won Gymkhanas in a doubtful way. 

Then ’twixt a vice and folly, turned aside 
To do good deeds and straight to cloak them lied. 

The Mess Room. 

If Reggie Burke were in India now, he would 
resent this tale being told ; but as he is in Hong- 
kong and won’t see it, the telling is safe. He 
was the man who worked the big fraud on the 
Sind and Sialkote Bank. He was manager of 
an up-country Branch, and a sound practical 
man with a large experience of native loan and 
insurance work. He could combine the frivoli- 
ties of ordinary life with his work, and yet do 
well. Reggie Burke rode anything that would 
let him get up, danced as neatly as he rode, and 
was wanted for every sort of amusement in the 
Station. 

As he said himself, and as many men found 
out rather to their surprise, there were two 
Burkes, both very much at your service. “ Reg- 
gie Burke,” between four and ten, ready for 
anything from a hot-weather gymkhana to a 
riding-picnic; and, between ten and four, “Mr. 
Reginald Burke, Manager of the Sind and Sial- 
kote Branch Bank.” You might play polo with 
him one afternoon and hear him express his 
opinions when a man crossed ; and you might 
call on him next morning to raise a two-thou- 
sand rupee loan on a five hundred pound insur- 

173 


1 74 Plain Tales From the Hills 

ance-policy, eighty pounds paid in premiums. 
He would recognize you, but you would have 
some trouble in recognizing him. 

The Directors of the Bank — it had its head- 
quarters in Calcutta and its General Manager’s 
word carried weight with the Government — 
picked their men well. They had tested Reggie 
up to a fairly severe breaking-strain. They 
trusted him just as much as Directors ever trust 
Managers. You must see for yourself whether 
their trust was misplaced. 

Reggie’s Branch was in a big Station, and 
worked with the usual staff — one Manager, one 
Accountant, both English, a Cashier, and a 
horde of native clerks ; besides the Police patrol 
at nights outside. The bulk of its work, for it 
was in a thriving district, was hoondi and ac- 
commodation of all kinds. A fool has no grip 
of this sort of business ; and a clever man who 
does not go about among his clients, and know 
more than a little of their affairs, is worse than a 
fool. Reggie was young-looking, clean-shaved, 
with a twinkle in his eye, and a head that noth- 
ing short of a gallon of the Gunners’ Madeira 
could make any impression on. 

One day, at a big dinner, he announced casu- 
ally that the Directors had shifted on to him a 
Natural Curiosity, from England, in the Ac- 
countant line. He was perfectly correct. Mr. 
Silas Riley, Accountant, was a most curious 
animal — a long, gawky, rawboned Yorkshire- 
man, full of the savage self-conceit that blossoms 
only in the best county in England. Arrogance 
was a mild word for the mental attitude of Mr. 
S. Riley. He had worked himself up, after seven 
years, to a Cashier’s position in a Huddersfield 








A Bank Fraud 


175 


Bank ; and all his experience lay among the 
factories of the North. Perhaps he would have 
done better on the Bombay side, where they are 
happy with one-half per cent, profits, and money 
is cheap. He was useless for Upper India and 
a wheat Province, where a man wants a large 
head and a touch of imagination if he is to turn 
out a satisfactory balance-sheet. 

He was wonderfully narrow-minded in busi- 
ness, and, being new to the country, had no 
notion that Indian banking is totally distinct 
from Home work. Like most clever self-made 
men, he had much simplicity in his nature ; 
and, somehow or other, had construed the ordi- 
narily polite terms of his letter of engagement 
into a belief that the Directors had chosen him 
on account of his special and brilliant talents, 
and that they set great store by him. This 
notion grew and crystalized ; thus adding to his 
natural North-country conceit. Further, he was 
delicate, suffered from some trouble in his chest, 
and was short in his temper. 

You will admit that Reggie had reason to call 
his new Accountant a Natural Curiosity. The 
two men failed to hit it off at all. Riley con- 
sidered Reggie a wild, feather-headed idiot, 
given to Heaven only knew what dissipation in 
low places called “ Messes,” and totally unfit for 
the serious and solemen vocation of banking. 
He could never get over Reggie’s look of youth 
and “ you-be-damned ” air ; and he couldn’t un- 
derstand Reggie’s friends — clean-built, careless 
men in the Army — who rode over to big Sunday 
breakfasts at the Bank, and told sultry stories 
till Riley got up and left the room. Riley was 
always showing Reggie how the business ought 


176 Plain Tales From the Hills 

to be conducted, and Reggie had more than 
once to remind him that seven years’ limited 
experience between Huddersfield and Beverly 
did not qualify a man to steer a big up-country 
business. Then Riley sulked, and referred to 
himself as a pillar of the Bank and a cherished 
friend of the Directors, and Reggie tore his hair. 
If a man's English subordinates fail him in this 
country, he comes to a hard time indeed, for 
native help has strict limitations. In the winter 
Riley went sick for weeks at a time with his 
lung complaint, and this threw more work on 
Reggie. But he preferred it to the everlasting 
friction when Riley was well. 

One of the Traveling Inspectors of the Bank 
discovered these collapses and reported them to 
the Directors. Now Riley had been foisted on 
the Bank by an M. P., who wanted the support 
of Riley’s father, who, again, was anxious to get 
his son out to a warmer climate because of those 
lungs. The M. P. had interest in the Bank ; 
but one of the Directors wanted to advance a 
nominee of his own ; and, after Riley’s father 
had died, he made the rest of the Board see that 
an Accountant who was sick for half the year 
had better give place to a healthy man. If Riley 
had known the real story of his appointment, he 
might have behaved better ; but, knowing noth- 
ing, his stretches of sickness alternated with rest- 
less, persistent, meddling irritation of Reggie, 
and all the hundred ways in which conceit in a 
subordinate situation can find play. Reggie 
used to call him striking and hair-curling names 
behind his back as a relief to his own feelings ; 
but he never abused him to his face, because he 
said : — “ Riley is such a frail beast that half of 


A Bank Fraud 


177 

his loathsome conceit is due to pains in his 
chest.” 

Late one April, Riley went very sick indeed. 
The doctor punched him and thumped him, and 
told him he would be better before long-. Then 
the doctor went to Reggie and said : — “ Do you 
know how sick your Accountant is ? ” “ No ! ” 

said Reggie — *“ The worse the better, confound 
him ! He’s a clacking nuisance when he’s well. 
I’ll let you take away the Bank Safe if you can 
drug him silent for this hot weather.” 

But the doctor did not laugh. — “ Man, I’m not 
joking,” he said. “ I’ll give him another three 
months in his bed and a week or so more to die 
in. On my honor and reputation that’s all the 
grace he has in this world. Consumption has 
hold of him to the marrow.” 

Reggie’s face changed at once into the face 
of “ Mr. Reginald Burke,” and he answered : — 
“What can I do?” “Nothing,” said the doc- 
tor. “For all practical purposes the man is 
dead already. Keep him quiet and cheerful and 
tell him he’s going to recover. That’s all. I’ll 
look after him to the end, of course.” 

The doctor went away, and Reggie sat down 
to open the evening mail. His first letter was 
one from the Directors, intimating for his in- 
formation that Mr. Riley was to resign, under a 
month’s notice, by the terms of his agreement, 
telling Reggie that their letter to Riley would 
follow, and advising Reggie of the coming of a 
new Accountant, a man whom Reggie knew 
and liked. 

Reggie lit a cheroot, and, before he had fin- 
ished smoking, he had sketched the outline of a 
fraud. He put away — “ burked ” — the Directors’ 


178 Plain Tales From the Hills 

letter, and went in to talk to Riley, who was as 
ungracious as usual, and fretting himself over 
the way the Bank would run during his illness. 
He never thought of the extra work on Reggie’s 
shoulders, but solely of the damage to his own 
prospects of advancement. Then Reggie as- 
sured him that everything would be well, and 
that he, Reggie, would confer with Riley daily 
on the management of the Bank. Riley was a 
little soothed, but he hinted in as many words 
that he did not think much of Reggie’s business 
capacity. Reggie was humble. And he had 
letters in his desk from the Directors that a 
Gilbarte or a Hardie might have been proud 
of! 

The days passed in the big darkened house, 
and the Directors’ letter of dismissal to Riley 
came and was put away by Reggie who, every 
evening, brought the books to Riley’s room, and 
showed him what had been going forward, while 
Riley snarled. Reggie did his best to make 
statements pleasing to Riley, but the Account- 
ant was sure that the Bank was going to rack 
and ruin without him. In June, as the lying in 
bed told on his spirit, he asked whether his 
absence had been noted by the Directors, and 
Reggie said that they had written most sympa- 
thetic letters, hoping that he would be able to 
resume his valuable services before long. He 
showed Riley the letters ; and Riley said that 
the Directors ought to have written to him 
direct. A few days later, Reggie opened Riley’s 
mail in the half-light of the room, and gave him 
the sheet — not the envelope — of a letter to Riley 
from the Directors. Riley said he would thank 
Reggie not to interfere with his private papers, 


A Bank Fraud 


179 

specially as Reggie knew he was too weak to 
open his own letters. Reggie apologized. 

Then Riley’s mood changed and he lectured 
Reggie on his evil ways : his horses and his bad 
friends. “ Of course lying here, on my back, 
Mr. Burke, I can’t keep you straight ; but when 
I’m well, I do hope you’ll pay some heed to my 
words.” Reggie, who had dropped polo, and 
dinners, and tennis, and all to attend to Riley, 
said that he was penitent and settled Riley’s 
head on the pillow and heard him fret and con- 
tradict in hard, dry, hacking whispers, without 
a sign of impatience. This at the end of a heavy 
day’s office work, doing double duty, in the latter 
half of June. 

When the new Accountant came, Reggie told 
him the facts of the case, and announced to Riley 
that he had a guest staying with him. Riley 
said that he might have had more consideration 
than to entertain his “ doubtful friends ” at such 
a time. Reggie made Carron, the new Accoun- 
tant, sleep at the Club in consequence. Carron’s 
arrival took some of the heavy work off his 
shoulders, and he had time to attend to Riley’s 
exactions — to explain, soothe, invent, and settle 
and re-settle the poor wretch in bed, and to forge 
complimentary letters from Calcutta. At the 
end of the first month, Riley wished to send 
some money home to his mother. Reggie sent 
the draft. At the end of the second month, 
Riley’s salary came in just the same. Reggie 
paid it out of his own pocket ; and, with it, wrote 
Riley a beautiful letter from the Directors. 

Riley was very ill indeed, but the flame of his 
life burnt unsteadily. Now and then he would 
be cheerful and confident about the future, 


180 Plain Tales From the Hills 


sketching plans for going Home and seeing his 
mother. Reggie listened patiently when the 
office-work was over, and encouraged him. 

At other times, Riley insisted on Reggie read- 
ing the Bible and grim “Methody” tracts to 
him. Out of these tracts he pointed morals 
directed at his Manager. But he always found 
time to worry Reggie about the working of the 
Bank, and to show him where the weak points 
lay. 

This in-door, sick-room life and constant 
strains wore Reggie down a good deal, and 
shook his nerves, and lowered his billiard-play 
by forty points. But the business of the Bank, 
and the business of the sick-room, had to go on, 
though the glass was n6° in the shade. 

At the end of the third month, Riley was sink- 
ing fast, and had begun to realize that he was 
very sick. But the conceit that made him worry 
Reggie, kept him from believing the worst. 
“ He wants some sort of mental stimulant if he 
is to drag on,” said the doctor. “ Keep him in- 
terested in life if you care about his living.” So 
Riley, contrary to all the laws of business and 
the finance, received a 25 per-cent, rise of salary 
from the Directors. “ The mental stimulant ” 
succeeded beautifully. Riley was happy and 
cheerful, and, as is often the case in consumption, 
healthiest in mind when the body was weakest. 
He lingered for a full month, snarling and fretting 
about the Bank, talking of the future, hearing 
the Bible read, lecturing Reggie on sin, and 
wondering when he would be able to move 
abroad. 

But at the end of September, one mercilessly 
hot evening, he rose up in his bed with a little 


A Bank Fraud 181 

gasp, and said quickly to Reggie : — “Mr. Burke, 
I am going to die. I know it in myself. My 
chest is all hollow inside, and there’s nothing to 
breathe with. To the best of my knowledge I have 
done nowt,” — he was returning to the talk of his 
boyhood — “ to lie heavy on my conscience. God 
be thanked, I have been preserved from the 
grosser forms of sin ; and I counsel you , Mr. 
Burke. . . .” 

Here his voice died down, and Reggie stooped 
over him. 

“ Send my salary for September to my Mother. 
.... done great things with the Bank if I had 
been spared .... mistaken policy .... no 
fault of mine. . .” 

Then he turned his face to the wall and died. 

Reggie drew the sheet over Its face, and went 
out into the veranda, with his last “ mental 
stimulant ” — a letter of condolence and sympathy 
from the Directors — unused in his pocket. 

“ If I’d been only ten minutes earlier,” thought 
Reggie, “ I might have heartened him up to pull 
through another day.” 


TODS’ AMENDMENT. 


The World hath set its heavy yoke 
Upon the old white-bearded folk 
Who strive to please the King. 

God’s mercy is upon the young, 

God’s wisdom in the baby tongue 
That fears not anything. 

The Parable of Chajju Bhagat. 

9 • • 

Now Tods’ Mama was a singularly charm- 
ing woman, and every one in Simla knew Tods. 
Most men had saved him from death on occa- 
sions. He was beyond his ayah's control alto- 
gether, and periled his life daily to find out what 
would happen if you pulled a Mountain Battery 
mule’s tail. He was an utterly fearless young 
Pagan, about six years old, and the only baby 
who ever broke the holy calm ot the Supreme 
Legislative Council. 

It happened this way : Tods’ pet kid got loose, 
and fled up the hill, off the Boileaugunge Road, 
Tods’ after it, until it burst into the Viceregal 
Lodge lawn, then attached to “ Peterhoff.” The 
Council were sitting at the time, and the windows 
were open because it was warm. The Red 
Lancer in the porch told Tods to go away ; but 
Tods knew the Red Lancer and most of the 
Members of Council personally. Moreover, he 
had firm hold of the kid’s collar, and was being 
dragged all across the flower-beds. “ Give my 
salaam to the long Councilor Sahib, and ask 
him to help me take Moti back ! ” gasped Tods. 
The Council heard the noise through the open 
windows ; and, after an interval, was seen the 
182 


Tod’s Amendment 183 

shocking spectacle of a legal Member and a Lieu- 
tenant-Governor helping, under the direct patron- 
age of a Commander-in-Chief and a Viceroy, one 
small and very dirty boy in a sailor’s suit and a 
tangle of brown hair, to coerce a lively and 
rebellious kid. They headed it off down the 
path to the Mall, and Tods went home in triumph 
and told his Mama that all the Councilor 
Sahibs had been helping him to catch Moll. 
Whereat his Mama smacked Tods for inter- 
fering with the administration of the Empire ; 
but Tods met the Legal Member the next day, 
and told him in confidence that if the Legal 
Member ever wanted to catch a goat, he, Tods, 
would give him ail the help in his power. 
“ Thank you, Tods,” said the Legal Member. 

Tods was the idol of some eighty jhampanis , 
and half as many saises. He saluted them all 
as “ O Brother.” It never entered his head that 
any living human being could disobey his orders ; 
and he was the buffer between the servants 
and his Mama’s wrath. The working of that 
household turned on Tods, who was adored by 
every one from the dhoby to the dog-boy. Even 
Futteh Khan, the villainous loafer khit from 
Mussoorie, shirked risking Tods’ displeasure for 
fear his co-mates should look down on him. 

So Tods had honor in the land from Boileau- 
gunge to Chota Simla, and ruled justly according 
to his lights. Of course, he spoke Urdu, but he 
had also mastered many queer side-speeches like 
the chote bolee of the women, and held grave 
converse with shopkeepers and Hill-coolies alike. 
He was precocious for his age, and his mixing 
with natives had taught him some of the more 
bitter truths of life ; the meanness and the sor- 


184 Plain Tales From the Hills 

didness of it. He used, over his bread and 
milk, to deliver solemn and serious aphorisms, 
translated from the vernacular into the English, 
that made his Mama jump and vow that Tods 
must go home next hot weather. 

Just when Tods was in the bloom of his power, 
the Supreme Legislature were hacking out a 
Bill, for the Sub-Montane Tracts, a revision of the 
then Act, smaller than the Punjab Land Bill but 
affecting a few hundred thousand people none 
the less. The Legal Member had built, and 
bolstered, and embroidered, and amended that 
Bill, till it looked beautiful on paper. Then 
the Council began to settle what they called the 
“ minor details.” As if any Englishman legislat- 
ing for natives knows enough to know which are 
the minor and which are the major points, from 
the native point of view, of any measure 1 That 
bill was a triumph of “ safe guarding the in- 
terests of the tenant.” One clause provided that 
land should not be leased on longer terms than 
five years at a stretch ; because, if the landlord 
had a tenant bound down for, say, twenty years, 
he would squeeze the very life out of him. The 
notion was to keep up a stream of independent 
cultivators in the Sub-Montane Tracts ; and 
ethnologically and politically the notion was 
correct. The only drawback was that it was 
altogether wrong. A native’s life in India im- 
plies the life of his son. Wherefore, you cannot 
legislate for one generation at a time. You 
must consider the next from the native point of 
view. Curiously enough, the native now and 
then, and in Northern India more particularly, 
hates being over-protected against himself. 
There was a Naga village once, where they lived 


TocTs Amendment 185 

on dead and buried Commissariat mules. . . . 
But that is another story. 

For many reasons, to be explained later, the 
people concerned objected to the Bill. The 
Native Member in Council knew as much about 
Punjabis as he knew about Charing Cross. He 
had said in Calcutta that “ the Bill was entirely 
in accord with the desires of that large and im- 
portant class, the cultivators ; ” and so on, and 
so on. The Legal Member’s knowledge of 
natives was limited to English-speaking Dur- 
baris, and his own red chaprassis, the Sub- 
Montane Tracts concerned no one in particular, 
the Deputy Commissioners were a good deal too 
driven to make representations, and the measure 
was one which dealt with small landholders 
only. Nevertheless, the Legal Member prayed 
that it might be correct, for he was a nervously 
conscientious man. He did not know that no 
man can tell what natives think unless he mixes 
with them with the varnish off. And not always 
then. But he did the best he knew. And the 
measure came up to the Supreme Council for the 
final touches, while Tods patrolled the Burra 
Simla Bazar in his morning rides, and played 
with the monkey belonging to Ditta Mull, the 
bunnia , and listened, as a child listens, to all the 
stray talk about this new freak of the Lat Sahib's. 

One day there was a dinner-party, at the house 
of Tods’ Mama, and the Legal Member came. 
Tods was in bed, but he kept awake till he heard 
the bursts of laughter from the men over the 
coffee. Then he paddled out in his little red 
flannel dressing-gown and his night-suit and took 
refuge by the side of his father, knowing that he 
would not be sent back. “See the miseries of 


186 Plain Tales From the Hills 


having a family ! ” said Tods’ lather, giving Tods 
three prunes, some water in a glass that had 
been used for claret, and telling him to sit still. 
Tods sucked the prunes slowly, knowing that he 
would have to go when they were finished, and 
sipped the pink water like a man of the world, 
as he listened to the conversation. Presently, 
the Legal Member, talking “shop ” to the Head 
of a Department, mentioned his Bill by its full 
name — “The Sub Montane Tracts Ryotwary 
Revised Enactment.” Tods caught the one 
native word and lifting up his small voice 
said : — 

“ Oh, I know all about that ! Has it been 
murramutted yet, Councillor Sahib." 

“ How much ? ” said the Legal Member. 

“ Murramutted — mended. — Put theek , you 
know — made nice to please Ditta Mull ! ” 

The Legal Member left his place and moved 
up next to Tods. 

“ What do you know about Ryotwari , little 
man ? ” he said. 

“ I’m not a little man, I’m Tods, and I know 
all about it. Ditta Mull, and Choga Lall, and 
Amir Nath, and — oh, lakhs of my friends tell 
me about it in the bazars when I talk to them.” 

“ Oh, they do — do they ? What do they say, 
Tods?” 

Tods tucked his feet under his red flannel 
dressing-gown and said : — “ I must fink." 

The Legal Member waited patiently. Then 
Tods, with infinite compassion : 

“ You don’t speak my talk, do you, Councillor 
Sahib ? ” > 

“ No ; I am sorry to say I do not,” said the 
Legal Member. 


Tod’s Amendment 187 

“Very well,” said Tods, “I must Jink in 
English.” 

He spent a minute putting his ideas in order, 
and began very slowly, translating in his mind 
from the vernacular to English, as many Anglo- 
Indian children do. You must remember that 
the Legal Member helped him on by questions 
when he halted, for Tods was not equal to the 
sustained flight of oratory that follows. 

“ Ditta Mull says : — « This thing is the talk of 
a child, and was made up by fools.’ But /don’t, 
think you are a fool, Councillor Sahib," said 
Tods hastily. “You caught my goat. This is- 
what Ditta Mull says : — 4 I am not a fool, and 
why should the Sirkar say I am a child ? I can 
see if the land is good and if the landlord is 
good. If I am a fool, the sin is upon my own 
head. For five years I take my ground for 
which I have saved money, and a wife I take too, 
and a little son is born.’ Ditta Mull has one 
daughter now, but he says he will have a son, 
soon. And he says : ‘ At the end of five years, 

by this new bundobust , I must go. If I do not 
go, I must get fresh seals and tahkus- stamps 
on the papers, perhaps in the middle of the 
harvest, and to go to the law courts once is 
wisdom, but to go twice is Jehannum .’ That is 
quite true,” explained Tods gravely. “ All my 
friends say so. And Ditta Mull says : — 4 Always 
fresh takkus and paying money to vakils and 
chafirassis and law-courts every five years, or 
else the landlord makes me go. Why do I want 
to go ? Am I a fool ? If I am a fool and do 
not know, after forty years, good land when I 
see it, let me die ! But if the new bundobust 
says for Jifteen years, that it is good and wise. 


1 88 Plain Tales From the Hills 


My little son is a man, and I am burnt, and he 
takes the ground or another ground, paying only 
once for the takkus - stamps on the papers, and 
his little son is born, and at the end of fifteen 
years is a man too. But what profit is there in 
five years and fresh papers ? Nothing but dikh- 
trouble, dikh. We are not young men who take 
these lands, but old ones — not jats , but trades- 
men with a little money — and for fifteen years 
we shall have peace. Nor are we children that 
the Sirkar should treat us so.’ ” 

Here Tods stopped short, for the whole table 
were listening. The Legal Member said to 
Tods : “ Is that all ? ” 

“ All I can remember,” said Tods. “ But you 
should see Ditta Mull’s big monkey. It’s just 
like a Councillor Sahib." 

“Tods ! Go to bed,” said his father. 

Tods gathered up his dressing-gown tail and 
departed. 

The Legal Member brought his hand down 
on the table with a crash — “ By Jove ! ” said the 
Legal Member, “ I believe the boy is right. The 
short tenure is the weak point.” 

He left early, thinking over what Tods had 
said. Now, it was obviously impossible for the 
Legal Member to play with a bujmias monkey, 
by way of getting understanding ; but he did 
better. He made inquiries, always bearing in 
mind the fact that the real native — not the 
hybrid, University-trained mule — is as timid as 
a colt, and, little by little, he coaxed some of the 
men whom the measure concerned most inti- 
mately to give in their views, which squared 
very closely with Tod’s evidence. 

So the Bill was amended in that clause ; and 


Tods’ Amendment 


189 

the Legal member was filled with an uneasy 
suspicion that Native Members represent very 
little except the Orders they carry on their 
bosoms. But he put the thought from him as 
illiberal. He was a most Liberal man. 

After a time, the news spread through the 
bazars that Tods had got the Bill recast in the 
tenure-clause, and if Tods’ Mama had not inter- 
fered, Tods would have made himself sick on the 
baskets of fruit and pistachio nuts and Cabuli 
grapes and almonds that crowded the veranda. 
Till he went Home, Tods ranked some few de- 
grees before the Viceroy in popular estimation. 
But for the little life of him Tods could not 
understand why. 

In the Legal Member’s private-paper-box still 
lies the rough draft of the Sub-Montane Tracts 
Ryotwary Revised Enactment ; and, opposite 
the twenty-second clause, penciled in blue chalk, 
and signed by the Legal Member, are the word 
“ Tods' Amendment 


THE DAUGHTER OF THE REGIMENT. 


Jain ’Ardin’ was a Sarjint’s wife, 

A Sarjint’s wife wus she. 

She married of ’im in Orldershort 
An’ corned acrost the sea. 

(.Chorus) ’Ave you never ’eard tell o’ Jain ’Ardin’ ? 

Jain ’Ardin’ ? 

Jain ’Ardin’ ? 

’Ave you never ’eard tell o’ Jain ’Ardin’ ? 

The pride o’ the Company ? 

Old Barrack~Rootn Ballad. 

“ A gentleman who doesn’t know the Circas- 
sian Circle ought not to stand up for it — puttin’ 
everybody out.” That was what Miss McKenna 
said, and the Sergeant who was my vis-a-vis 
looked the same thing. I was afraid of Miss 
McKenna. She was six feet high, all yellow 
freckles and red hair, and was simply clad in 
white satin shoes, a pink muslin dress, an apple- 
green stuff sash, and black silk gloves, with yel- 
low roses in her hair. Wherefore I fled from 
Miss McKenna and sought my friend Private 
Mulvaney who was at the cant — refreshment- 
table. 

“So you’ve been dancin’ with little Jhansi Mc- 
Kenna, Sorr — she that’s goin' to marry Corp’ril 
Slane ? Whin you next conversh wid your 
lorruds an’ your ladies, tell thim you’ve danced 
wid little Jhansi. ’Tis a thing to be proud av.” 

But I wasn’t proud. I was humble. I saw a 
story in Private Mulvaney ’s eye ; and, besides, 
if he stayed too long at the bar, he would, I 
knew, qualify for more pack-drill. Now to meet 
an esteemed friend doing pack-drill outside the 
guard-room, is embarrassing, especially if you 
190 


The Daughter of the Regiment 191 

happen to be walking with his Commanding 
Officer. 

"Come on to the parade-ground, Mulvaney, 
it’s cooler there, and tell me about Miss Mc- 
Kenna. What is she, and who is she, and why 
is she called « Jhansi ’ ? ” 

“ D’ye mane to say you’ve never heard av 
Ould Pummeloe’s daughter ? An’ you thinkin’ 
you know things ! I’m wid ye in a minut’ whin 
me poipe’s lit.” 

We came out under the stars. Mulvaney sat 
down on one of the artillery bridges, and began 
in the usual way : his pipe between his teeth, 
his big hands clasped and dropped between his 
knees, and his cap well on the back of his head : 

" Whin Mrs. Mulvaney, that is, was Miss Shad 
that was, you were a dale younger than you are 
now, an’ the Army was dif'rint in sev’ril e-sen- 
shuls. Bhoys have no call for to marry nowa- 
days, an’ that’s why the Army has so few rale, 
good, honust, swearin’, strapagin’, tinder-heart- 
ed, heavy-futted wives as ut used to hav whin I 
was a Corp’ril. I was rejuced afterwards — but 
no matther — I was a Corp’ril wanst. In thim 
times, a man lived an ’ died wid his rigiment ; 
an’ by natur’, he married whin he was a matt. 
Whin I was Corp’ril — Mother av Hivin, how the 
rigimint has died an’ been borrun since that 
day ! — my Color-Sar’jint was Ould McKenna, 
an’ a married man tu. An’ his woife — his first 
woife, for he married three times did McKenna 
— was Bridget McKenna, from Portarlington, 
like mesilf. I’ve misremembered fwhat her first 
name was ; but in B Comp’ny we called her 
« Ould Pummeloe ’ by reason av her figure, which 
was entirely cir-cum-fe-renshil. Like the big 


192 Plain Tales From the Hills 

dhrum ! Now that woman — God rock her sowl 
to rest in glory ! — was for everlastin’ havin’ 
childher : an’ McKenna, whin the fifth or sixth 
come squallin’ on to the musther-roll, swore he 
wud number them off in future. ButOuld Pum- 
meloe she prayed av him to christen thim after 
the names of the stations they was borrun in. 
So there was Colaba McKenna, an’ Muttra Mc- 
Kenna, an’ a whole Presidincy av other McKen- 
nas, an’ little Jhansi, dancin’ over yonder. Whin 
the children wasn’t bornin’, they was dying ; for, 
av our childer die like sheep in these days, they 
died like flies thin. I lost me own little Shad — 
but no matther. ’Tis long ago, and Mrs. Mul- 
vaney niver had another. 

“ I’m digresshin. Wan divil’s hot summer, 
there come an order from some mad ijjit, whose 
name I misremember, for the rijimint to go up- 
country. May be they wanted to know how the 
new rail carried throops. They knew ! On me 
sowl, they knew before they was done ! Ould 
Pummeloe had just buried Muttra McKenna ; 
an’ the season bein’ onwholesim, only little 
Jhansi McKenna, who was four year ould thin, 
was left on hand. 

“ Five children gone in fourteen months. 
’Twas harrd, wasn’t ut ? 

“ So we wint up to our new station in that 
blazin’ heat — may the curse av Saint Lawrence 
conshume the man who gave the ordher ! Will 
I ivir forget that move ? They gave us two 
wake thrains to the rigimint ; an’ we was eight 
hundher’ and sivinty strong. There was A. B. C. 
an’ D. Companies in the secon’ thrain, wid twelve 
women, no orficers’ ladies, an’ thirteen childer. 
We was to ‘go six hundher’ miles, an’ railways 


The Daughter of the Regiment 193 

was new in thim days. Whin we had been a 
night in the belly av the thrain — the men ragin’ 
in their shirts an’ dhrinkin’ anything they cud 
find, an’ eatin’ bad fruit-stuff whin they cud, 
for we cudn’t stop ’em — I was a Corp’ril thin — 
the cholera bruk out wid the dawnin’ av the day. 

“ Pray to the Saints, you may niver see cholera 
in a throop-thrain ! ’Tis like the judgmint av 
God hittin’ down from the nakid sky ! We run 
into a rest-camp — as ut might have been Ludi- 
anny, but not by any means so comfortable. 
The Orficer Commandin’ sent a telegrapt up the 
line, three hundher’ mile up, askin’ for help. 
Faith, we wanted ut, for ivry sowl av the fol- 
lowers ran for the dear life as soon as the thrain 
stopped ; an’ by the time that telegrapt was 
writ, there wasn’t a naygur in the station ex- 
ceptin’ the telegrapt-clerk — an’ he only bekaze 
he was held down to his chair by the scruff av 
his sneakin’ black neck. Thin the day began 
wid the noise in the carr’ges, an’ the rattle av 
the men on the platform failin’ over, arms an’ all, 
as they stud for to answer the Comp’ny muster- 
roll before goin’ over to the camp. ’Tisn’t for 
me to say what like the cholera was like. May- 
be the Doctor cud ha’ tould, av he hadn’t dropped 
on to the platform from the door av a carriage 
where we was takin’ out the dead. He died 
wid the rest. Some bhoys had died in the night. 
We tuk out siven, and twenty more was sick- 
enin’ as we tuk thim. The women was huddled 
up any ways, screamin’ wid fear. 

“Sez the Commandin’ Orficer whose name I 
misremember : — ‘Take the women over to that 
tope av trees yonder. Get thim out av the 
camp. ’Tis no place for thim.’ 

13 


194 Plain Tales From the Hills 

“ Ould Pummeloe was sittirT on her beddin’- 
rowl, tryin’ to kape little Jhansi quiet. ‘Go off 
to that tope ! ’ sez the Orticer. ‘ Go out av the 
men’s way ! ’ 

“ ‘ Be damned av I do ! ’ sez Ould Pummeloe, 
an’ little Jhansi, squattin’ by her mother’s side, 
squeaks out: — ‘Be damned av I do,’ tu. Thin 
Ould Pummeloe turns to the women an’ she 
sez : — ‘ Are ye goin’ to let the bhoys die while 
you’re picnickin’, ye sluts ! ’ she sez. ‘ ’Tis 
wather they want. Come on an’ help.’ 

“ Wid that, she turns up her sleeves an’ steps 
out for a well behind the rest-camp — little Jhansi 
trottin’ behind wid a lotah an’ string, an’ the 
other women followin’ like lambs, wid horse- 
buckets and cookin’ degchies. Whin all the 
things was full, Ould Pummeloe marches back 
into camp — ’twas like a battlefield wid all the 
glory missin’ — at the hid av the rigiment av 
women. 

“ * McKenna, me man ! ’ she sez, wid a voice 
on her like grand-roun’s challenge’ * tell the 
bhoys to be quiet. Ould Pummeloe’s a-comin’ to 
look afther thim — wid free dhrinks.’ 

“ Thin we cheered, and the cheerin’ in the 
lines was louder than the noise av the poor devils 
wid the sickness on thim. But not much. 

“You see, we was a new an’ raw rigimint in 
those days, an’ we cud make neither head nor 
tail av the sickness ; an’ so we was useless. The 
men was goin’ roun’ an’ about like dumb sheep, 
waitin’ for the nex’ man to fall over, an’ sayin’ 
undher their spache : — ’Fwhat is ut ? In the 
name av God, fwhat is ut ? ’ ’Twas horrible. 
But through ut all, up an’ down, an’ down an’ 
up, wint Ould Pummeloe an’ little Jhansi — all 


The Daughter of the Regiment 195 

we cud see av the baby, undher a dead man’s 
helmet wid the chin-strap swingin’ about her 
little stummick — up an’ down wid the wather 
and fwhat brandy there was. 

“Now an’ thin, Ould Pummeloe, the tears 
runnin' down her fat, red face, sez : — * Me bhoys, 
me poor, dead darlin’ bhoys ! ’ But, for the 
most, she was thryin’ to put heart into the men 
an’ kape thimstiddy ; and little Jhansi was tellin* 
thim all they wud be ‘ betther in the mornin’.’ 
’Twas a thrick she’d picked up from hearing 
Ould Pummeloe whin Muttra was burnin’ out 
wid fever. In the mornin’ ! ’Twas the iver- 
lastin’ mornin’ at St. Peter’s Gate was the mornin’ 
for seven an’ twenty good men ; an’ twenty more 
was sick to the death in that bitter, burnin’ sun. 
But the women worked like angils, as I've said, 
an’ the men like devils, till two doctors come 
down from above, an’ we was rescued. 

“ But, just before that, Ould Pummeloe, on 
her knees over a bhoy in my squad — right-cot 
man to me he was in thebarrick — tellin’ him the 
worrud av the Church that niver failed a man 
yet, sez : — ‘ Hould me up, bhoys ! I’m feelin’ 
bloody sick ! ’ ’Twas the sun, not the cholera, 
did ut. She misremembered she was only wearin’ 
her ould black bonnet, an’ she died wid ‘ Mc- 
Kenna, me man,’ houldin’ her up, an’ the bhoys 
howled whin they buried her. 

“That night, a big wind blew, an’ blew, an’ 
blew, an’ blew the tents flat. But it blew the 
cholera away an’ niver another case there was 
all the while we was waitin’ — ten days in quar- 
intin’. Av you will belave me, the thrack of the 
sickness in the camp was for all the worruld the 
thrack of a man walkin’ four times in a figure- 


196 Plain Tales From the Hills 

av-eight through the tents. They say ’tis the 
Wandherin’ Jew takes the cholera wid him. I 
believe it. 

“ An’ that," said Mulvaney, illogically, “ is the 
cause why little Jhansi McKenna is fwhatshe is. 
She was brought up by the Quarter-Master Ser- 
geant’s wife whin McKenna died, but she b’longs 
to B. Comp’ny ; an’ this tale I’m tellin’ you — wid 
a proper appreciashin av Jhansi McKenna — I’ve 
belted into every recruity av the Comp’ny as he 
was drafted. Faith, ’twas me belted Corp’ril 
Slane into askin’ the girl ! ” 

“Not really ? ” 

“ Man, I did ! She’s no beauty to look at, but 
she’s Ould Pummeloe’s daughter, an’ ’tis myjuty 
to provide for her. Just before Slane got his 
wan-eight a day, I sez to him : — « Slane,’ sez I, 
* to-morrow ’twill be insubordinashin av me to 
chastise you ; but, by the sowl av Ould Pum- 
meloe, who is now in glory, av you don’t give 
me your worrud to ask Jhansi McKenna at 
wanst, I’ll peel the flesh off yer bones wid a brass 
huk to-night. ’Tis a dishgrace to B. Comp’ny 
she’s been single so long ! ’ sez I. Was I goin’ 
to let a three-year-ould preshume to discoorse 
wid me ; my will bein' set ? No ! Slane wint 
and asked her. He’s a good bhoy is Slane. 
Wan av these days he’ll get into the Com’ssariat 

an dhrive a boggy wid his savin’s. So I 

provided for Ould Pummeloe’s daughter ; an’ 
now you go along an’ dance wid her.” 

And I did. 

I felt a respect for Miss Jhansi McKenna ; and 
I went to her wedding later on. 

Perhaps I will tell you about that one of these 
days. 


IN THE PRIDE OF HIS YOUTH. 


“ Stopped in the straight when the race was his own ! 

Look at him cutting it — cur to the bone ! ” 

H Ask, ere the youngster be rated and chidden, 

What did he carry and how was he ridden ? 

Maybe they used him too much at the start ; 

Maybe Fate’s weight-cloths are breaking his heart.” 

Life's Handicap. 

When I was telling you of the joke that The 
Worm played off on the Senior Subaltern, I 
promised a somewhat similar tale, but with all 
the jest left out. This is that tale. 

Dicky Hatt was kidnapped in his early, early 
youth — neither by landlady’s daughter, house- 
maid, barmaid, nor cook, but by a girl so nearly 
of his own caste that only a woman could have 
said she was just the least little bit in the world 
below it. This happened a month before he 
came out to India, and five days after his one- 
and-twentieth birthday. The girl was nineteen 
— six years older than Dicky in the things of this 
world, that is to say — and, for the time, twice as 
foolish as he. 

Excepting, always, falling off a horse there is 
nothing more fatally easy than marriage before 
the Registrar. The ceremony costs less than 
fifty shillings, and is remarkably like walking 
into a pawn-shop. After the declarations of 
residence have been put in, four minutes will 
cover the rest of the proceedings — fees, attesta- 
tion, and all. Then the Registrar slides the 
blotting-pad over the names, and says grimly 
with his pen between his teeth : — “Now you’re 

197 


198 Plain Tales From the Hills 

man and wife ; ” and the couple walk out into the 
street, feeling as if something were horribly 
illegal somewhere. 

But that ceremony holds and can drag a man 
to his undoing just as thoroughly as the “ long 
as ye both shall live ” curse from the altar-rails, 
with the bridesmaids giggling behind, and “ The 
Voice that breathed o'er Eden " lifting the roof 
off. In this manner was Dicky Hatt kidnapped, 
and he considered it vastly fine, for he had re- 
ceived an appointment in India which carried a 
magnificent salary from the Home point of view. 
The marriage was to be kept secret for a year. 
Then Mrs. Dicky Hatt was to come out and the 
rest of life was to be a glorious golden mist. 
That was how they sketched it under the Addison 
Road Station lamps ; and, after one short month, 
came Gravesend and Dicky steaming out to his 
new life, and the girl crying in a thirty-shillings 
a week bed-and-living-room, in a back street off 
Montpelier-Square near the Knightsbridge Bar- 
racks. 

But the country that Dicky came to was a 
hard land where “ men ” of twenty-one were 
reckoned very small boys indeed, and life was 
expensive. The salary that loomed so large six 
thousand miles away did not go far. Particu- 
larly when Dicky divided it by two, and remitted 
more than the fair half, at 1-6, to Montpelier 
Square. One hundred and thirty-five rupees out 
of three hundred and thirty is not much to live 
on ; but it was absurd to suppose that Mrs. Hatt 
could exist forever on the £20 held back by 
Dicky from his outfit allowance. Dicky saw this 
and remitted at once ; always remembering that 
Rs. 700 were to be paid, twelve months later, for 


In the Pride of His Youth 199 

a first-class passage out for a lady. When you 
add to these trifling details the natural instincts 
of a boy beginning a new life in a new country 
and longing to go about and enjoy himself, and 
the necessity for grappling with strange work — 
which, properly speaking, should take up a boy’s 
undivided attention — you will see that Dicky 
started handicapped. He saw it himself for a 
breath or two ; but he did not guess the full 
beauty of his future. 

As the hot weather began, the shackles settled 
on him and ate into his flesh. First would come 
letters — big, crossed, seven-sheet letters — from 
his wife, telling him how she longed to see him, 
and what a Heaven upon earth would be their 
property when they met. Then some boy of the 
chummery wherein Dicky lodged would pound 
on the door of his bare little room, and tell him 
to come out to look at a pony — the very thing to 
suit him. Dicky could not afford ponies. He 
had to explain this. Dicky could not afford 
living in the chummery, modest as it was. He 
had to explain this before he moved to a single 
room next the office where he worked all day. 
He kept house on a green oil-cloth table-cover, 
one chair, one charpoy, one photograph, one 
tooth-glass, very strong and thick, a seven-rupee 
eight-anna filter, and messing by contract at 
thirty-seven rupees a month. Which last item 
was extortion. He had no punkah, for a punkah 
costs fifteen rupees a month ; but he slept on the 
roof of the office with ail his wife’s letters under 
his pillow. Now and again he was asked out to 
dinner where he got both a punkah and an iced 
drink. But this was seldom, for people objected 
to recognizing a boy who had evidently the in- 


200 Plain Tales From the Hills 


stincts of a Scotch tallow-chandler, and who lived 
in such a nasty fashion. Dicky could not sub- 
scribe to any amusement, so he found no amuse- 
ment except the pleasure of turning over his 
Bank-book and reading what it said about 
“ loans on approved security.” That cost noth- 
ing. He remitted through a Bombay Bank, by 
the way, and the Station knew nothing of his 
private affairs. 

Every month he sent Home all he could pos- 
sibly spare for his wife — and for another reason 
which was expected to explain itself shortly and 
would require more money. 

About this time, Dicky was overtaken with the 
nervous haunting fear that besets married men 
when they are out of sorts. He had no pension 
to look to. What if he should die suddenly, and 
leave his wife unprovided for ? The thought used 
to lay hold of him in the still, hot nights on the 
roof, till the shaking of his heart made him think 
that he was going to die then and there of heart- 
disease. Now this is a frame of mind which no 
boy has a right to know. It is a strong man’s 
trouble ; but, coming when it did, it nearly 
drove poor punkahless, perspiring Dicky Hatt 
mad. He could tell no one about it. 

A certain amount of “ screw ” is as necessary 
for a man as for a billiard-ball. It makes them 
both do wonderful things. Dicky needed money 
badly, and he worked for it like a horse. But, 
naturally, the men who owned him knew that a 
boy can live very comfortably on a certain in- 
come — pay in India is a matter of age, not 
merit, you see, and, if their particular boy wished 
to work like two boys, Business forbid that they 
should stop him ! But Business forbid that they 


In the Pride of His Youth 201 


should give him an increase of pay at his 
present ridiculously immature age ! So Dicky 
won certain rises of salary — ample for a boy — 
not enough for a wife and a child — certainly too 
little for the seven-hundred-rupee passage that 
he and Mrs. Hatt had discussed so lightly once 
upon a time. And with this he was forced to be* 
content. 

Somehow, all his money seemed to fade away 
in Home drafts and the crushing Exchange, and 
the tone of the Home letters changed and grew 
querulous. “ Why wouldn’t Dicky have his wife 
and the baby out ? Surely he had a salary — a 
fine salary — and it was too bad of him to enjoy 
himself in India. But would he — could he — 
make the next draft a little more elastic ? ” Here 
followed a list of baby’s kit, as long as a Parsee’s 
bill. Then Dicky, whose heart yearned to his 
wife and the little son he had never seen — which, 
again, is a feeling no boy is entitled to — enlarged 
the draft and wrote queer half-boy, half-man 
letters, saying that life was not so enjoyable after 
all and would the little wife wait yet a little 
longer ? But the little wife, however much she 
approved of money, objected to waiting, and 
there was a strange, hard sort of ring in her 
letters that Dicky didn’t understand. How could 
he, poor boy ? 

Later on still — just as Dicky had been told — 
a propos of another youngster who had “ made 
a fool of himself ” as the saying is — that matri- 
mony would not only ruin his further chances of 
advancement, but would lose him his present 
appointment — came the news that the baby, his 
own little, little son, had died and, behind this, 
forty lines of an angry woman’s scrawl, saying 


202 Plain Tales From the Hills 


the death might have been averted if certain 
things, all costing money, had been done, or if 
the mother and the baby had been with Dicky. 
The letter struck at Dicky’s naked heart ; but, 
not being officially entitled to a baby, he could 
show no sign of trouble. 

How Dicky won through the next four months, 
and what hope he kept alight to force him into 
his work, no one dare say. He pounded on, the 
seven-hundred-rupee passage as far away as 
ever, and his style of living unchanged, except 
when he launched into a new filter. There 
was the strain of his office-work, and the strain 
of his remittances, and the knowledge of his boy’s 
death, which touched the boy more, perhaps, 
than it would have touched a man ; and, beyond 
all, the enduring strain of his daily life. Gray- 
headed seniors who approved of his thrift and his 
fashion of denying himself everything pleasant, 
reminded him of the old saw that says : — 

“ If a youth would be distinguished in his art, art, art, 
He must keep the girls away from his heart, heart, 
heart.” 

And Dicky, who fancied he had been through 
every trouble that a man is permitted to know, 
had to laugh and agree ; with the last line of 
his balanced Bank-book jingling in his head day 
and night. 

But he had one more sorrow to digest before 
the end. There arrived a letter from the little 
wife — the natural sequence of the others if Dicky 
had only known it — and the burden of that letter 
was “gone with a handsomer man than you.” 
It was a rather curious production, without stops, 
something like his: — “She was not going to 


In the Pride of His Youth 203 

wait forever and the baby was dead and Dicky 
was only a boy and he would never set eyes on 
her again and why hadn’t he waved his hand- 
kerchief to her when he left Gravesend and God 
was her judge she was a wicked woman but 
Dicky was worse enjoying himself in India and 
this other man loved the ground she trod on and 
would Dicky ever forgive her for she would 
never forgive Dicky ; and there was no address 
to write to.” 

Instead of thanking the stars that he was free, 
Dicky discovered exactly how an injured hus- 
band feels — again, not at all the knowledge to 
which a boy is entitled — for his mind went back 
to his wife as he remembered her in the thirty- 
shilling “ suite ” in Montpelier Square, when the 
dawn of his last morning in England was break- 
ing, and she was crying in the bed. Whereat 
he rolled about on his bed and bit his fingers. 
He never stopped to think whether, if he had met 
Mrs. Hatt after those two years, he would have 
discovered that he and she had grown quite dif- 
ferent and new persons. This, theoretically, he 
ought to have done. He spent the night after 
the English Mail came in rather severe pain. 

Next morning, Dicky Hatt felt disinclined to 
work. He argued that he had missed the pleas- 
ure of youth. He was tired, and he had tasted 
all the sorrow in life before three and twenty. 
His Honor was gone — that was the man ; and 
now he, too, would go to the Devil — that was the 
boy in him. So he put his head down on the 
green oil-cloth table-cover, and wept before re- 
signing his post, and all it offered. 

But the reward of his services came. He was 
given three days to reconsider himself, and the 


204 Plain Tales From the Hills 

Head of the establishment, after some telegraph- 
ings, said that it was a most unusual step, but 
in view of the ability that Mr. Hatt had displayed 
at such and such a time, at such and such 
junctures, he was in a position to offer him an 
infinitely superior post — first on probation, 
and later, in the natural course of things, on con- 
firmation. “ And how much does the post 
carry ? ” said Dicky. “ Six hundred and fifty 
rupees,” said the Head slowly, expecting to see 
the young man sink with gratitude and joy. 

And it came then ! The seven hundred rupee 
passage, and enough to have saved the wife, and 
the little son, and to have allowed of assured and 
open marriage, came then. Dicky burst into a 
roar of laughter — laughter he could not check — 
nasty, jangling merriment that seemed as if it 
would go on forever. When he had recovered 
himself he said, quite seriously : — “ I’m tired of 
work. I’m an old man now. It’s about time I 
retired. And I will.” 

“ The boy’s mad ! ” said the Head. 

I think he was right ; but Dicky Hatt never 
reappeared to settle the question. 


PIG. 


Go, stalk the red deer o’er the heather 
Ride, follow the fox if you can ! 

But, for pleasure and profit together, 

Allow me the hunting of Man, — 

The chase of the Human, the search for the Soul 
To its ruin, — the hunting of Man. 

The Old Shikarri. 

I believe the difference began in the matter 
of a horse, with a twist in his temper, whom 
Pinecoffin sold to Nafiferton and by whom Naf- 
ferton was nearly slain. There may have been 
other causes of offense ; the horse was the offi- 
cial stalking-horse. Nafferton was very angry; 
but Pinecoffin laughed and said that he had 
never guaranteed the beast’s manners. Naffer- 
ton laughed, too, though he vowed that he would 
write off his fall against Pinecoffin if he waited 
five years. Now, a Dalesman from beyond 
Skipton will forgive an injury when the Strid 
lets a man live ; but a South Devon man is as 
soft as a Dartmoor bog. You can see from their 
names that Nafferton had the race-advantage of 
Pinecoffin. He was a peculiar man, and his no- 
tions of humor were cruel. He taught me a new 
and fascinating form of shikar. He hounded 
Pinecoffin from Mithankot to Jagadri, and from 
Gurgaon to Abbottabad — up and across the 
Punjab, a large Province and in places remark- 
ably dry. He said that he had no intention of 
allowing Assistant Commissioners to “sell him 
pups,” in the shape of ramping, screaming coun- 

205 


2 o 6 Plain Tales From the Hills 


try-breds, without making their lives a burden to 
them. 

Most Assistant Commissioners develop a bent 
for some special work after their first hot weather 
in the country. The boys with digestions hope 
to write their names large on the Frontier, and 
struggle for dreary places like Bannu and Kohat. 
The bilious ones climb into the Secretariat. 
Which is very bad for the liver. Others are 
bitten with a mania for District work, Ghuz- 
nivide coins or Persian poetry ; while some, 
who come of farmers’ stock, find that the smell 
of the Earth after the Rains gets into their 
blood, and calls them to “ develop the resources 
of the Province.” These men are enthusiasts. 
Pinecoffin belonged to their class. He knew a 
great many facts bearing on the cost of bullocks 
and temporary wells, and opium-scrapers, and 
what happens if you burn too much rubbish on a 
field, in the hope of enriching used-up soil. All 
the Pinecoffins come of a landholding breed, and 
so the land only took back her own again. Un- 
fortunately — most unfortunately for Pinecoffin — 
he was a Civilian, as well as a farmer. Naffer- 
ton watched him, and thought about the horse. 
Nafferton said : — “ See me chase that boy till he 
drops!” I said: — “You can’t get your knife 
into an Assistant Commissioner.” Nafferton told 
me that I did not understand the administration 
of the Province. 

Our Government is rather peculiar. It gushes 
on the agricultural and general information side, 
and will supply a moderately respectable man with 
all sorts of “ economic statistics,” if he speaks to 
it prettily. For instance, you are interested in 
gold-washing in the sands of the Sutlej. You 


Pig 207 

pull the string, and find that it wakes up half a 
dozen Departments, and finally communicates, 
say, with a friend of yours in the Telegraph, who 
once wrote some notes on the customs of the 
gold-washers when he was on construction-work 
in their part of the Empire. He may or may 
not be pleased at being ordered to write out 
everything he knows for your benefit. This de- 
pends on his temperament. The bigger man 
you are, the more information and the greater 
trouble can you raise. 

Nafferton was not a big man ; but he had 
the reputation of being very “ earnest.” An 
“earnest” man can do much with a Govern- 
ment. There was an earnest man once who 
nearly wrecked. . . but all India knows that 
story. I am not sure what real “ earnestness ” 
is. A very fair imitation can be manufactured 
by neglecting to dress decently, by mooning 
about in a dreamy, misty sort of way, by taking 
office-work home after staying in office till seven, 
and by receiving crowds of native gentlemen 
on Sundays. That is one sort of “ earnestness.” 

Nafferton cast about for a peg whereon to 
hang his earnestness, and for a string that would 
communicate with Pinecoffin. He found both. 
They were Pig. Nafferton became an earnest 
inquirer after Pig. He informed the Government 
that he had a scheme whereby a very large per- 
centage of the British Army in India could be 
fed, at a very large saving, on Pig. Then he 
hinted that Pinecoffin might supply him with the 
“ varied information necessary to the proper in- 
ception of the scheme.” So the Government 
wrote on the back of the letter : — “ Instruct Mr. 
Pinecoffin to furnish Mr. Nafferton with any in- 


2 o 8 Plain Tales From the Hills 


formation in his power.” Government is very- 
prone to writing things on the backs of letters 
which, later, lead to trouble and confusion. 

Nafferton had not the faintest interest in Pig, 
but he knew that Pinecoffin would flounce into 
the trap. Pinecoffin was delighted at being con- 
sulted about Pig. The Indian Pig is not exactly 
an important factor in agricultural life : but 
Nafferton explained to Pinecoffin that there was 
room for improvement, and corresponded direct 
with that young man. 

You may think that there is not much to be 
evolved from Pig. It all depends how you set 
to work. Pinecoffin being a Civilian and wish- 
ing to do things thoroughly, began with an essay 
on the Primitive Pig, the Mythology of the Pig, 
and the Dravidian Pig. Nafferton filed that in- 
formation — twenty-seven foolscap sheets — and 
wanted to know about the distribution of the Pig 
in the Punjab, and how it stood the Plains in the 
hot weather. From this point onwards, re- 
member that I am giving you only the barest 
outlines of the affair — the guy-ropes, as it were, 
of the web that Nafferton spun round Pinecoffin. 

Pinecoffin made a colored Pig-population map, 
and collected observations on the comparative 
longevity of Pig ( a ) in the sub-montane tracts 
of the Himalayas, and ( b ) in the Rechna Doab. 
Nafferton filed that, and asked what sort of 
people looked after Pig. This started an ethno- 
logical excursus on swineherds, and drew from 
Pinecoffin long tables showing the proportion 
per thousand of the caste in the Derajat. Naf- 
ferton filed that bundle, and explained that the 
figures which he wanted referred to the Cis- 
Sutlej states, where he understood that Pigs 


209 


Pig 

were very fine and large, and where he proposed 
to start a Piggery. By this time, Government 
had quite forgotten their instructions to Mr. 
Pinecoffin. They were like the gentlemen, in 
Keat’s poem, who turned well-oiled wheels to 
skin other people. But Pinecoffin was just en- 
tering into the spirit of the Pig-hunt, as Naffer- 
ton well knew he would do. He had a fair 
amount of work of his own to clear away ; but 
he sat up of nights reducing Pig to five places of 
!. decimals for the honor of his Service. He was 
not going to appear ignorant of so easy a subject 
| as Pig. 

Then Government sent him on special duty to 
Kohat, to “ inquire into ” the big, seven-foot, 
iron-shod spades of that District. People had 
: been killing each other with those peaceful 
tools ; and Government wished to know “ whether 
a modified form of agricultural implement could 
| not, tentatively and as a temporary measure, be 
introduced among the agricultural population 
1 without needlessly or unduly exacerbating the 
existing religious sentiments of the peasantry.” 

Between those spades and NafFerton’s Pig, 
Pinecoffin was rather heavily burdened. 

Nafferton now began to take up “ (a) The 
food-supply of the indigenous Pig, with a view 
to the improvement of its capacities as a flesh- 
former. (b) The acclimatization of the exotic 
Pig, maintaining its distinctive peculiarities.” 
Pinecoffin replied exhaustively that the exotic 
Pig would become merged in the indigenous 
type ; and quoted horse-breeding statistics to 
prove this. The side-issue was debated, at 
great length oh Pinecoffin’s side, till Nafferton 
owned that he had been in the wrong, and moved 

U 


2io Plain Tales From the Hills 


the previous question. When Pinecoffin had 
quite written himself out about flesh-formers, and 
fibrins, and glucose and the nitrogenous con- 
stituents of maize and lucerne, Nafferton raised 
the question of expense. By this time Pine- 
coffin, who had been transferred from Kohat, 
had developed a Pig theory of his own, which he 
stated in thirty-three folio pages — all carefully 
filed by Nafferton. Who asked for more. 

These things took ten months, and Pinecoffin’s 
interest in the potential Piggery seemed to die 
down after he had stated his own views. But 
Nafferton bombarded him with letters on “the 
Imperial aspect of the scheme, as tending to 
officialize the sale of pork, and thereby caculated 
to give offense to the Mahomedan population of 
Upper India.” He guessed that Pinecoffin would 
want some broad, free-hand work after his 
niggling, stippling, decimal details. Pinecoffin 
handled the latest development of the case in 
masterly style, and proved that no “ popular 
ebullition of excitement was to be apprehended.” 
Nafferton said that there was nothing like Civil- 
ian insight in matters of this kind, and lured him 
up a bye-path — “the possible profits to accrue to 
the Government from the sale of hog-bristles.” 
There is an extensive literature of hog-bristles, 
and the shoe, brush, and colorman’s trades recog- 
nize more varieties of bristles than you would 
think possible. After Pinecoffin had wondered 
a little at Nafferton’s rage for information, he 
sent back a monograph, fifty-one pages, on 
“ Products of the Pig.” This led him, under 
Nafferton’s tender handling, straight to the Cawn- 
pore factories, the trade in hogskin for saddles 
— and thence to the tanners. Pinecoffin wrote 


21 1 


Pig 

that pomegranate-seed was the best cure for hog- 
skin, and suggested — for the past fourteen 
months had wearied him — that Nafferton should 
“ raise his pigs before he tanned them.” 

Nafferton went back to the second section of 
his fifth question. How could the exotic Pig be 
brought to give as much pork as it did in the 
West and yet “assume the essentially hirsute 
characteristics of its oriental congener ? ” Pine- 
coffin felt dazed, for he had forgotten what he had 
written sixteen months before, and fancied that 
he was about to reopen the entire question. He 
was so far involved in the hideous tangle to 
retreat, and, in a weak moment, he wrote : — 
“Consult my first letter.” Which related to the 
Dravidian Pig. As a matter of fact, Pinecoffin 
had still to reach the acclimatization stage ; 
having gone off on a side-issue on the merging 
of types. 

Then Nafferton really unmasked his batteries ! 
He complained to the Government, in stately 
language, of “ the paucity of help accorded to 
me in my earnest attempts to start a potentially 
remunerative industry, and the flippancy with 
which my requests for information are treated 
by a gentleman whose pseudo-scholarly attain- 
ments should at least have taught him the pri- 
mary differences between the Dravidian and the 
Berkshire variety of the genus Sus. If I am to 
understand that the letter to which he refers me 
contains his serious views on the acclimatization 
of a valuable, though possibly uncleanly, animal, 
I am reluctantly compelled to believe,” etc., etc. 

There was a new man at the head of the De- 
partment of Castigation. The wretched Pine- 
coffin was told that the Service was made for 


212 Plain Tales From the Hills 


the Country, and not the Country for the Service, 
and that he had better begin to supply informa- 
tion about Pigs. 

Pinecoffin answered insanely that he had writ- 
ten everything that could be written about Pig, 
and that some furlough was due to him. 

Nafferton got a copy of that letter, and sent it, 
with the essay on the Dravidian Pig, to a down- 
country paper which printed both in full. The 
essay was rather high-flown ; but if the Editor 
had seen the stacks of paper, in Pinecoffin’s 
handwriting, on Nafferton’s table, he would not 
have been so sarcastic about the “nebulous dis- 
cursiveness and blatant self-sufficiency of the 
modern Competition-wa/la/i, and his utter in- J 
ability to grasp the practical issues of a practical 
question.” Many friends cut out these remarks 
and sent them to Pinecoffin. 

I have already stated that Pinecoffin came of 
a soft stock. This last stroke frightened and 
shook him. He could not understand it ; but 
he felt that he had been, somehow, shamelessly 
betrayed by Nafferton. He realized that he had 
wrapped himself up in the Pigskin without need, 
and that he could not well set himself right with 
his Government. All his acquaintances asked 
after his “ nebulous discursiveness ” or his ' 
“ blatant self-sufficiency,” and this made him 
miserable. 

He took a train and went to Nafferton whom 
he had not seen since the Pig business began. 
He also took the cutting from the paper, and 
blustered feebly and called Nafferton names, and 
then died down to a watery, weak protest of the 

I-say-it’s-too-bad-you-know ” order. 

Nafferton was very sympathetic. 


Pig 213 

“ I’m afraid I’ve given you a good deal of 
trouble, haven’t I ? ” said he. 

“Trouble!” whimpered Pinecoffin ; “I don’t 
mind the trouble so much, though that was bad 
enough ; but what I resent is this showing up in 
print. It will stick to me like a burr all through 
my service. And I did do my best for your in- 
terminable swine. It’s too bad of you, on my 
soul it is ! ” 

“ I don’t know,” said Nafferton ; “ have you 
ever been stuck with a horse ? It isn’t the 
money I mind, though that is bad enough ; but 
what I resent is the chaff that follows, especially 
from the boy who stuck me. But I think we’ll 
cry quits ow.” 

Pinecoffin found nothing to say save bad 
words ; and Nafferton smiled ever so sweetly, 
and asked him to dinner. 


THE ROUT OF THE WHITE HUSSARS. 

It was not in the open field 
We threw away the sword, 

But in the lonely watching 
In the darkness by the lord, 

The waters lapped, the night-wind blew, 

Full-armed the fear was born and grew, 

And we were flying ere we knew 
From panic in the night. 

Beoni Bar. 

Some people hold that an English Cavalry 
regiment cannot run. This is a mistake. I 
have seen four hundred and thirty-seven sabers 
flying over the face of the country in abject terror 
— have seen the best Regiment -that ever drew 
bridle, wiped off the Army List for the space of 
two hours. If you repeat this tale to the White 
Hussars they will, in all probability, treat you 
severely. They are not proud of the incident. 

You may know the White Hussars by their 
•• side ” which is greater than that of all the 
Cavalry Regiments on the roster. If this is not 
a sufficient mark, you may know them by their 
old brandy. It has been sixty years in the Mess 
and is worth going far to taste. Ask for the 
“ McGaire ” old brandy, and see that you get it. 
If the Mess Sergeant. thinks that you are unedu- 
cated, and that the genuine article will be lost 
on you, he will treat you accordingly. He is a 
good man. But, when you are at Mess, you 
must never talk to your hosts about forced 
marches or long-distance rides. The Mess are 
very sensitive ; and, if they think that you are 
laughing at them, will tell you so. 

214 


The Rout of the White Hussars 215 

As the White Hussars say, it was all the Colo- 
nel’s fault. He was a new man, and he ought 
never to have taken the Command. He said 
that the Regiment was not smart enough. This 
to the White Hussars, who knew they could 
walk round any Horse and through any Guns, 
and over any Foot on the face of the earth ! 
That insult was the first cause of offense. 

Then the Colonel cast the Drum-Horse — the 
Drum-Horse of the White Hussars ! Perhaps 
you do not see what an unspeakable crime he had 
committed. I will try to make it clear. The 
soul of the Regiment lives in the Drum-Horse 
who carries the silver kettle-drums. He is 
nearly always a big piebald Waler. That is a 
point of honor ; and a Regiment will spend any- 
thing you please on a piebald. He is beyond 
the ordinary laws of casting. His work is very 
light, and he only manoeuvres at a foot-pace. 
Wherefore, so long as he can step out and look 
handsome, his well-being is assured. He knows 
more about the Regiment than the Adjutant, 
and could not make a mistake if he tried. 

The Drum-Horse of the White Hussars was 
only eighteen years old, and perfectly equal to 
his duties. He had at least six years’ more work 
in him, and carried himself with all the pomp 
and dignity of a Drum-Major of the Guards. 
The Regiment had paid Rs. 1,200 for him. 

But the Colonel said that he must go, and he 
was cast in due form and replaced by a washy, 
bay beast, as ugly as a mule, with a ewe-neck, 
rat-tail, and cow-hocks. The Drummer detested 
that animal, and the best of the Band-horses put 
back their ears and showed the whites of their 
eyes at the very sight of him. They knew him 


216 Plain Tales From the Hills 


for an upstart and no gentleman. I fancy that 
the Colonel’s ideas of smartness extended to the 
Bind, and that he wanted to make it take part in 
the regular parade movements. A Cavalry Band 
is a sacred thing. It only turns out for Com- 
manding Officers’ parades, and the Band Master 
is one degree more important than the Colonel. 
He is a High Priest and the “ Keel Row ” is his 
holy song. The “ Keel Row" is the Cavalry 
Trot ; and the man who has never heard that 
tune rising, high and shrill, above the rattle of 
the Regiment going past the saluting-base, has 
something yet to hear and understand. 

When the Colonel cast the Drum-Horse of the 
White Hussars, there was nearly a mutiny. 

The officers were angry, the Regiment were 
furious, and the Bandsmen swore — like troopers. 
The Drum-Horse was going to be put up to 
auction — public auction — to be bought, perhaps 
by a Parsee and put into a cart ! It was worse 
than exposing the inner life of the Regiment to 
the whole world, or selling the Mess Plate to a 
Jew — a black Jew. 

The Colonel was a mean man and a bully. He 
knew what the Regiment thought about his 
action ; and, when the troopers offered to buy 
the Drum-Horse, he said that their offer was 
mutinous and forbidden by the regulations. 

But one of the Subalterns — Hogan-Yale, an 
Irishman — bought the Drum-Horse for Rs. 160 
at the sale ; and the Colonel was wroth. Yale 
professed repentance — he was unnaturally sub- 
missive — and said that, as he had only made the 
purchase to save the horse from possible ill- 
treatment and starvation, he would now shoot 
him and end the business. This appeared to 


The Rout of the White Hussars 217 

j soothe the Colonel, for he wanted the Drum- 
I Horse disposed of. He felt that he had made a 
mistake, and could not of course acknowledge it. 
Meantime, the presence of the Drum-Horse was 
an annoyance to him. 

Yale took to himself a glass of the old brandy, 
three cheroots, and his friend, Martyn ; and they 
all left the Mess together. Yale and Martyn 
conferred for two hours in Yale’s quarters ; but 
only the bull-terrier who keeps watch over Yale’s 
boot-trees knows what they said. A horse, 
j hooded and sheeted to his ears, left Yale’s stables 
! and was taken very unwillingly, into the Civil 
Lines. Yale’s groom went with him. Two men 
I broke into the Regimental Theater and took sev- 
I eral paint-pots and some large scenery brushes. 
Then night fell over the Cantonments, and there 
was a noise as of a horse kicking his loose-box 
to pieces in Yale’s stables. Yale had a big, old, 
white Waler trap-horse. 

The next day was a Thursday, and the men, 
hearing that Yale was going to shoot the Drum- 
Horse in the evening, determined to give the 
beast a regular regimental funeral — a finer one 
than they would have given the Colonel had he 
died just then. They got a bullock-cart and 
some sacking, and mounds and mounds of roses, 
and the body, under sacking, was carried out to 
the place where the anthrax cases were cremated ; 
two-thirds of the Regiment following. There 
[ was no Band, but they all sang “ The Place 
where the old Horse died ” as something respect- 
ful and appropriate to the occasion. When the 
corpse was dumped into the grave and the men 
began throwing down armfuls of roses to cover 
it, the Farrier-Sergeant ripped out an oath and 


218 Plain Tales From the Hills 

said aloud : — “ Why, it ain’t the Drum-Horse I 
any more than it’s me ! ” The Troop-Sergeant- j 
Majors asked him whether he had left his head 
in the Canteen. The Farrier-Sergeant said that | 
he knew the Drum-Horse’s feet as well as he i 
knew his own ; but he was silenced when he 
saw the regimental number burnt in on the poor 
stiff, upturned near-fore. 

Thus was the Drum-Horse of the White Hus- 
sars buried ; the Farrier-Sergeant grumbling. 
The sacking that covered the corpse was smeared 
in places with black paint; and the Farrier- 
Sergeant drew attention to this fact. But the ! 
Troop-Sergeant-Major of E Troop kicked him I 
severely on the shin, and told him that he was 
undoubtedly drunk. 

On the Monday following the burial, the 
Colonel sought revenge on the White Hussars. 
Unfortunately, being at that time temporarily in 
Command of the Station, he ordered a Brigade 
field-day. He said that he wished to make the 
regiment “sweat for their damned insolence,” 
and he carried out his notion thoroughly. That 
Monday was one of the hardest days in the 
memory of the White Hussars. They were 
thrown against a skeleton-enemy, and pushed 
forward, and withdrawn, and dismounted, and 
“ scientifically handled ” in every possible fashion 
over dusty country, till they sweated profusely. 
Their only amusement came late in the day 
when they fell upon the battery of Horse Artil- 
lery and chased it for two miles. This was a 
personal question, and most of the troopers had 
money on the event ; the Gunners saying openly 
that they had the legs of the White Hussars. 
They were wrong. A march-past concluded the 


The Rout of the White Hussars 219 

campaign, and when the Regiment got back to 
their Lines, the men were coated with dirt from 
spur to chin-strap. 

The White Hussars have one great and pe- 
culiar privilege. They won it at Fontenoy, I 
think. 

Many Regiments possess special rights such 
as wearing collars with undress uniform, or a 
bow of ribbon between the shoulders, or red and 
white roses in their helmets on certain days of 
the year. Some rights are connected with 
regimental saints, and some with regimental 
t successes. All are valued highly ; but none so 
highly as the right of the White Hussars to have 
| the Band playing when their horses are being 
f watered in the Lines. Only one tune is played, 
and that tune never varies. I don’t know its 
real name, but the White Hussars call it : — 

I “ Take me to London again." It sounds very 
| pretty. The Regiment would sooner be struck 
e off the roster than forego their distinction. 

After the “ dismiss ” was sounded, the officers 
rode off home to prepare for stables ; and the 
men filed into the lines, riding easy. That is to 
say, they opened their tight buttons, shifted their 
helmets, and began to joke or to swear as the 
humor took them ; the more careful slipping off 
and easing girths and curbs. A good trooper 
values his mount exactly as much as he values 
himself, and believes, or should believe, that the 
it two together are irresistible where women or 
i men, girls or guns, are concerned. 

Then the Orderly-Officer gave the order : — 

| “Water horses,” and the Regiment loafed off to 
i| the squadron-troughs which were in rear of the 
stables and between these and the barracks. 


220 Plain Tales From the Hills 


There were four huge troughs, one for each 
squadron, arranged en echelon , so that the whole 
Regiment could water in ten minutes if it liked. 
But it lingered for seventeen, as a rule, while 
the Band played. 

The Band struck up as the squadrons filed off 
the troughs, and the men slipped their feet out 
of the stirrups and chaffed each other. The sun 
was just setting in a big, hot bed of red cloud, 
and the road to the Civil Lines seemed to run 
straight into the sun’s eye. There was a little 
dot on the road. It grew and grew till it showed 
as a horse, with a sort of gridiron thing on his 
back. The red cloud glared through the bars 
of the gridiron. Some of the troopers shaded 
their eyes with their hands and said : — “ What 
the mischief 'as that there ’orse got on ’im ! ” 

In another minute they heard a neigh that 
every soul — horse and man — in the Regiment 
knew, and saw, heading straight towards the 
Band, the dead Drum-Horse of the White Hus- 
sars ! 

On his withers banged and bumped the kettle- 
drums draped in crape, and on his back, very 
stiff and soldierly, sat a bare-headed skeleton. 

The band stopped playing, and, for a moment, 
there was a hush. 

Then some one in E troop — men said it was 
the Troop-Sergeant-Major — swung his horse 
round and yelled. No one can account exactly 
for what happened afterwards ; but it seems 
that, at least, one man in each troop set an ex- 
ample of panic, and the rest followed like sheep. 
The horses that had barely put their muzzles 
into the troughs reared and capered ; but, as 
soon as the Band broke, which it did when the 


The Rout of the White Hussars 221 


ghost of the Drum-Horse was about a furlong 
distant, all hooves followed suit, and the clatter 
of the stampede — quite different from the orderly- 
throb and roar of a movement on parade, or the 
rough horse-play of watering in camp — made 
them only more terrified. They felt that the 
men on their backs were afraid of something. 
When horses once know that , all is over except 
the butchery. 

Troop after troop turned from the troughs and 
ran — anywhere and everywhere — like spilt quick- 
silver. It was a most extraordinary spectacle, 
for men and horses were in all stages of easiness, 
and the carbine-buckets flopping against their 
sides urged the horses on. Men were shouting 
and cursing, and trying to pull clear of the Band 
which was being chased by the Drum-Horse 
whose rider had fallen forward and seemed to 
be spurring for a wager. 

The Colonel had gone over to the Mess for a 
drink. Most of the officers were with him, and 
the Subaltern of the Day was preparing to go 
down to the lines, and receive the watering 
reports from the Troop-Sergeant-Majors. When 
“ Take me to London again " stopped, after 
twenty bars, every one in the Mess said : — 
“ What on earth has happened ? ” A minute 
later, they heard unmilitary noises, and saw, far 
across the plain, the White Hussars scattered, 
and broken, and flying. 

The Colonel was speechless with rage, for he 
thought that the Regiment had risen against 
him or was unanimously drunk. The Band, a 
disorganized mob, tore past, and at its heels 
labored the Drum-Horse — the dead and buried 
Drum-Horse — with the jolting, clattering skele- 


222 Plain Tales From the Hills 


ton. Hogan-Yale whispered softly to Martyn : 
— “ No wire will stand that treatment,” and the 
Band, which had doubled like a hare, came back 
again. But the rest of the Regiment was gone, 
was rioting all over the Province, for the dusk 
had shut in and each man was howling to his 
neighbor that the Drum-Horse was on his flank. 
Troop-Horses are far too tenderly treated as a 
rule. They can, on emergencies, do a great 
deal, even with seventeen stone on their backs. 
As the troopers found out. 

How long this panic lasted I cannot say. I 
believe that when the moon rose the men saw 
they had nothing to fear, and, by twos and threes 
and half-troops, crept back into Cantonments 
very much ashamed of themselves. Meantime, 
the Drum-Horse, disgusted at his treatment 
by old friends, pulled up, wheeled round, and 
trotted up to the Mess veranda-steps for bread. 
No one liked to run ; but no one cared to go 
forward till the Colonel made a movement and 
laid hold of the skeleton’s foot. The Band had 
halted some distance away, and now came back 
slowly. The Colonel called it, individually and 
collectively, every evil name that occurred to 
him at the time ; for he had set his hand on the 
bosom of the Drum-Horse and found flesh and 
blood. Then he beat the kettle-drums with his 
clenched fist, and discovered that they were but 
made of silvered paper and bamboo. Next, still 
swearing, he tried to drag the skeleton out of the 
saddle, but found that it had been wired into the 
cantle. The sight of the Colonel, with his arms 
round the skeleton’s pelvis and his knee in the 
old Drum-Horse’s stomach, was striking. Not 
to say amusing. He worried the thing off in a 


The Rout of the White Hussars 223 

minute or two, and threw it down on the ground, 
saying to the Band : — “ Here, you curs, that’s 
what you’re afraid of.” The skeleton did not 
look pretty in the twilight. The Band-Sergeant 
seemed to recognize it, for he began to chuckle 
and choke. “ Shall I take it away, sir ? ” said 
the Band-Sergeant. “ Yes,” said the Colonel, 
“ take it to Hell, and ride there yourselves ! ” 

The Band-Sergeant saluted, hoisted the skele- 
ton across his saddle-bow, and led off to the 
stables. Then the Colonel began to make in- 
quiries for the rest of the Regiment, and the 
language he used was wonderful. He would 
disband the Regiment — he would court-martial 
every soul in it — he would not command such a 
set of rabble, and so on, and so on. As the 
men dropped in, his language grew wilder, until 
at last it exceeded the utmost limits of free speech 
allowed even to a Colonel of Horse. 

Martyn took Hogan-Yale aside and suggested 
compulsory retirement from the service as a 
necessity when all was discovered. Martyn was 
the weaker man of the two. Hogan-Yale put 
up his eyebrows and remarked, firstly, that he 
was the son of a Lord, and secondly, that he was 
as innocent as the babe unborn of the theatrical 
resurrection of the Drum-Horse. 

“My instructions,” said Yale, with a singu- 
larly sweet smile, “ were that the Drum-Horse 
should be sent back as impressively as possible. 

I ask you, am I responsible if a mule-headed 
friend sends him back in such a manner as to 
disturb the peace of mind of a regiment of Her 
Majesty’s Cavalry ? ” 

Martyn said : — “ You are a great man, and 
will in time become a General ; but I’d give 


224 Plain Tales From the Hills 

my chance of a troop to be safe out of this 
affair.” 

Providence saved Martyn and Hogan-Yale. 
The Second-in-Command led the Colonel away 
to the little curtained alcove wherein the Sub- 
alterns of the White Hussars were accustomed 
to play poker of nights ; and there, after many 
oaths on the Colonel’s part, they talked together 
in low tones. I fancied that the Second-in-Com- 
mand must have represented the scare as the 
work of some trooper whom it would be hopeless 
to detect ; and I know that he dwelt upon the 
sin and the shame of making a public laughing- 
stock of the scare. 

“They will call us,” said the Second-in-Com- 
mand, who had really a tine imagination, “ they 
will call us the * Fly-by-Nights ; ’ they will call 
us the * Ghost-Hunters ; ’ they will nickname us 
from one end of the Army list to the other. All 
the explanations in the world won’t make out- 
siders understand that the officers were away 
when the panic began. For the honor of the 
Regiment and for your own sake keep this thing 
quiet.” 

The Colonel was so exhausted with anger that 
soothing him down was not so difficult as might 
be imagined. He was made to see, gently and 
by degrees, that it was obviously impossible to 
court-martial the whole Regiment and equally 
impossible to proceed against any subaltern who, 
in his belief, had any concern in the hoax. 

“ But the beast’s alive ! He’s never been shot 
at all ! ” shouted the Colonel. “ It’s flat, flagrant 
disobedience ! I’ve known a man broke for less, 

d d side less. They’re mocking me, I tell you, 

Mutman 1 They’re mocking me ! ” 


The Rout of the White Hussars 225 

Once more, the Second-in-Command set him- 
self to soothe the Colonel, and wrestled with him 
for half-an-hour. At the end of that time the 
Regimental Sergeant-Major reported himself. 
The situation was rather novel to him ; but he 
was not a man to be put out by circumstances. 
He saluted and said : “ Regiment all come 
back, Sir.” Then, to propitiate the Colonel : — 
“ An’ none of the horses any the worse, Sir.” 

The Colonel only snorted and answered : — 
“You’d better tuck the men into their cots, then, 
and see that they don’t wake up and cry in the 
night.” The Sergeant-Major withdrew. 

His little stroke of humor pleased the Colonel, 
and, further, he felt slightly ashamed of the lan- 
guage he had been using. The Second-in-Com- 
mand worried him again, and the two sat talk- 
ing far into the night. 

Next day but one, there was a Commanding 
Officer’s parade, and the Colonel harangued the 
White Hussars vigorously. The pith of his 
speech was that, since the Drum-Horse in his old 
age had proved himself capable of cutting up the 
whole Regiment, he should return to his post of 
pride at the head of the Band, but the Regiment 
were a set of ruffians with bad consciences. 

The White Hussars shouted, and threw every- 
thing movable about them into the air, and when 
the parade was over, they cheered the Colonel 
till they couldn’t speak. No cheers were put up 
for Lieutenant Hogan-Yale who smiled very 
sweetly in the background. 

Said the Second-in-Command to the Colonel, 
unofficially : — 

»* These little things ensure popularity, and do 
not the least affect discipline.” 

15 


226 Plain Tales From the Hills 


“But I went back on my word,” said the Colo- 
nel. 

“ Never mind,” said the Second-in-Command. 
“ The White Hussars will follow you anywhere 
from to-day. Regiments are just like women. 
They will do anything for trinketry.” 

A week later, Hogan-Yale received an extraor- 
dinary letter from some one who signed him- 
seif “ Secretary, Charity and Zeal, 37 09, E. C.,” 
and asked for “ the return of our skeleton, which 
we have reason to believe is in your possession.’’ 

“ Who the deuce is this lunatic who trades in 
bones ? ” said Hogan-Yale, 

“ Beg your pardon, Sir,” said the Band-Ser- 
geant, “ but the skeleton is with me, an’ I’ll 
return it if you’ll pay the carriage into the Civil 
Lines. There’s a coffin with it, Sir.” 

Hogan-Yale smiled and handed two rupees to 
the Band-Sergeant, saying : — “ Write the date on 
the skull, will you ? ” 

If you doubt this story, and know where to 
go, you can see the date on the skeleton. But 
don’t mention the matter to the White Hussars. 

I happen to know something about it, because 
I prepared the Drum-Horse for his resurrection. 
He did not take kindly to the skeleton at all. 


THE BRONCKHORST DIVORCE CASE 














THE BRONCKHORST DIVORCE-CASE. 


In the daytime, when she moved about me, 

In the night when she was sleeping at my side, — 

I was wearied, I was wearied of her presence. 

Day by day and night by night I grew to hate her — 

Would God that she or I had died ! 

Confessions. 

There was a man called Bronckhorst — a 
three-cornered, middle-aged man in the Army — 
gray as a badger, and, some people said, with a. 
touch of country-blood in him. That, however,, 
cannot be proved. Mrs. Bronckhorst was not 
exactly young, though fifteen years younger than 
her husband. She was a large, pale, quiet 
woman, with heavy eyelids, over weak eyes, and 
hair that turned red or yellow as the lights fell 
on it. 

Bronckhorst was not nice in any way. He 
had no respect for the pretty public and private 
lies that make life a little less nasty than it is. 
His manner towards his wife was coarse. There 
are many things — including actual assault with 
the clenched fist — that a wife will endure ; but 
seldom a wife can bear — as Mrs. Bronckhorst 
bore — with a long course of brutal, hard chaff, 
making light of her weaknesses, her headaches, 
her small fits of gayety, her dresses, her queer 
little attempts to make herself attractive to her 
husband when she knows that she is not what 
she has been, and — worst of all — the love that 
she spends on her children. That particular 
sort of heavy-handed jest was specially dear to 
Bronckhorst. I suppose that he had first slipped 

227 


228 Plain Tales From the Hills 


into it, meaning no harm, in the honeymoon, 
when folk find their ordinary stock of endear- 
ments run short, and so go to the other extreme 
to express their feelings. A similar impulse 
makes a man say : — “ Hutt, you old beast ! ” 
when a favorite horse nuzzles his coat-front. 
Unluckily, when the reaction of marriage sets in, 
the form of speech remains, and, the tenderness 
having died out, hurts the wife more than she 
cares to say. But Mrs. Bronckhorst was devoted 
to her “ Teddy ” as she called him. Perhaps 
that was why he objected to her. Perhaps — 
this is only a theory to account for his infamous 
behavior later on — he gave away to the queer, 
savage feeling that sometimes takes by the throat 
a husband twenty years’ married, when he sees, 
across the table, the same same face of his wed- 
ded wife, and knows that, as he has sat facing 
it, so must he continue to sit until day of its 
death or his own. Most men and all women 
know the spasm. It only lasts for three breaths 
as a rule, must be a “ throw-back ” to times when 
men and women were rather worse than they 
are now, and is too unpleasant to be discussed. 

Dinner at the Bronckhorst’s was an infliction 
few men cared to undergo. Bronckhorst took a 
pleasure in saying things that made his wife 
wince. When their little boy came in at dessert, 
Bronckhorst used to give him half a glass of 
wine, and, naturally enough, the poor little mite 
got first riotous, next miserable, and was removed 
screaming. Bronckhorst asked if that was the 
way Teddy usually behaved, and whether Mrs. 
Bronckhorst could not spare some of her time to 
teach the “ little beggar decency.” Mrs. Bronck- 
horst, who loved the boy more than her own life. 


The Bronckhorst Divorce-Case 229 

tried not to cry — her spirit seemed to have been 
broken by her marriage. Lastly, Bronckhorst 
used to say : — “ There ! That’ll do, that’ll do. 
For God’s sake try to behave like a rational 
woman. Go into the drawing-room.” Mrs. 
Bronckhorst would go, trying to carry it all off 
with a smile ; and the guest of the evening 
would feel angry and uncomfortable. 

After three years of this cheerful life — for Mrs. 
Bronckhorst had no woman-friends to talk to — 
the Station was startled by the news that Bronck- 
horst had instituted proceedings on the criminal 
count , against a man called Biel, who certainly 
had been rather attentive to Mrs. Bronckhorst 
whenever she had appeared in public. The 
utter want of reserve with which Bronckhorst 
treated his own dishonor helped us to know that 
the evidence against Biel would be entirely cir- 
cumstantial and native. There were no letters ; 
but Bronckhorst said openly that he would rack 
Heaven and Earth until he saw Biel superin- 
tending the manufacture of carpets in the Cen- 
tral Jail. Mrs. Bronckhorst kept entirely to her 
house, and let charitable folks say what they 
pleased. Opinions were divided. Some two- 
thirds of the Station jumped at once to the con- 
clusion that Biel was guilty ; but a dozen men 
who knew and liked him held by him. Biel was 
furious and surprised. He denied the whole 
thing, and vowed that he would thrash Bronck- 
horst within an inch of his life. No jury, we 
knew, could convict a man on the criminal count 
on native evidence in a land where you can buy 
a murder-charge, including the corpse, all com- 
plete for fifty-four rupees ; but Biel did not care 
to scrape through by the benefit of a doubt. 


230 Plain Tales From the Hills 

He wanted the whole thing- cleared : but as he 
said one night : — “ He can prove anything with 
servants’ evidence, and I’ve only my bare word.” 
This was about a month before the case came 
on ; and beyond agreeing with Biel, we could 
do little. All that we could be sure of was that 
the native evidence would be bad enough to 
blast Biel’s character for the rest of his service ; 
for when a native begins perjury he perjures 
himself thoroughly. He does not boggle over 
details. 

Some genius at the end of the table whereat 
the affair was being talked over, said : — “ Look 
here ! I don’t believe lawyers are any good. 
Get a man to wire to Strickland, and beg him to 
come down and pull us through.” 

Strickland was about a hundred and eighty 
miles up the line. He had not long been married 
to Miss Youghal, but he scented in the telegram 
a chance of return to the old detective work that 
his soul lusted after, and next night he came in 
and heard our story. He finished his pipe and 
said oracularly : — “ We must get at the evidence. 
Oorya bearer, Mussalman khit and methrani- 
ayah, I suppose, are the pillars of the charge. 
I am on in this piece ; but I’m afraid I’m getting 
rusty in my talk.” 

He rose and went into Biel’s bedroom where 
his trunk had been put, and shut the door. An 
hour later, we heard him say : — “ I hadn’t the 
heart to part with my old make-ups when I 
married. Will this do ? ” There was a lothely 
faquir salaaming in the doorway. 

“Now lend me fifty rupees,” said Strickland, 
“ and give me your Words of Honor that you 
won’t tell my Wife.” 


The Bronckhorst Divorce-Case 231 

He got all that he asked for, and left the house 
while the table drank his health. What he did 
only he himself knows. A faquir hung about 
Bronckhorst’s compound for twelve days. Then 
a mehter appeared, and when Biel heard of him , 
he said that Strickland was an angel full-fledged. 
Whether the mehter made love to Jhanki, Mrs. 
Bronckhorst’s ayah , is a question which concerns 
Strickland exclusively. 

He came back at the end of three weeks, and 
said quietly : — “ You spoke the truth, Biel. The 
whole business is put up from beginning to end. 
’Jove! It almost astonishes me! That Bronck- 
horst-beast isn’t fit to live.” 

There was uproar and shouting, and Biel 
said : — “ How are you going to prove it ? You 
can’t say that you’ve been trespassing on Bronck- 
horst’s compound in disguise ! ” 

“ No,” said Strickland. Tell your lawyer-fool, 
whoever he is, to get up something strong about 
‘inherent improbabilities’ and ‘discrepancies of 
evidence.’ He won’t have to speak, but it will 
make him happy. I'm going to run this business.” 

Biel held his tongue, and the other men waited 
to see what would happen. They trusted Strick- 
land as men trust quiet men. When the case 
came off the Court was crowded. Strickland 
hung about in the veranda of the Court, till he 
met the Mohammedan khitmatgar. Then he 
murmured a faquirs blessing in his ear, and 
asked him how his second wife did. The man 
spun round, and, as he looked into the eyes of 
“ Estreeken Sahib," his jaw dropped. You must 
remember that before Strickland was married, 
he was, as I have told you already, a power 
among natives. Strickland whispered a rather 


232 Plain Tales From the Hills 

coarse venacular proverb to the effect that he 
was abreast of all that was going on, and went 
into the Court armed with a gut trainer’s-whip. 

The Mohammedan was the first witness and 
Strickland beamed upon him from the back of 
the Court. The man moistened his lips with his 
tongue and, in his abject fear of “ Estreeken 
Sahib ” the faquir , went back on every detail of 
his evidence — said he was a poor man and God 
was his witness that he had forgotten everything 
that Bronckhorst Sahib had told him to say. 
Between his terror of Strickland, the Judge, and 
Bronckhorst he collapsed, weeping. 

Then began the panic among the witnesses. 
Jhanki, the ayah , leering chastely behind her veil, 
turned gray, and the bearer left the Court. He 
said that his Mama was dying and that it was 
not wholesome for any man to lie unthriftily in 
the presence of “ Estreeken Sahib.” 

Biel said politely to Bronckhorst : — “ Your 
witnesses don’t seem to work. Haven’t you 
any forged letters to produce ? ” But Bronck- 
horst was swaying to and fro in his chair, and 
there was a dead pause after Biel had been 
called to order. 

Bronckhorst’s Counsel saw the look on his 
client’s face, and without more ado, pitched his 
papers on the little green baize table, and mum- 
bled something about having been misinformed. 
The whole Court applauded wildly, like soldiers 
at a theater, and the Judge began to say what 
he thought. 

Biel came out of the place, and Strickland 
dropped a gut trainer’s-whip in the veranda. 
Ten minutes later, Beil was cutting Bronckhorst 


The Bronckhorst Divorce-Case 233 

into ribbons behind the old Court cells, quietly 
and without scandal. What was left of Bronck- 
horst was sent home in a carriage ; and his wife 
wept over it and nursed it into a man again. 

Later on, after Biel had managed to hush up 
the counter-charge against Bronckhorst of fabri- 
cating false evidence, Mrs. Bronckhorst, with her 
faint, watery smile, said that there had been a 
mistake, but it wasn’t her Teddy’s fault alto- 
gether. She would wait till her Teddy came 
back to her. Perhaps he had grown tired of 
her, or she had tried his patience, and perhaps 
we wouldn’t cut her any more, and perhaps the 
mothers would let their children play with “little 
Teddy” again. He was so lonely. Then the 
Station invited Mrs. Bronckhorst everywhere, 
until Bronckhorst was fit to appear in public 
when he went Home and took his wife with him. 
According to the latest advices, her Teddy did 
“ come back to her,” and they are moderately 
happy. Though, of course, he can never forgive 
her the thrashing that she was the indirect means 
of getting for him. 

What Biel wants to know is : — “ Why didn’t I 
press home the charge against the Bronckhorst- 
brute, and have him run in ? ” 

What Mrs. Strickland wants to know is : — 
“ How did my husband bring such a lovely, 
lovely Waler from your Station ? I know all his 
money-affairs ; and I’m certain he didn’t buy it.” 

What I want to know is : — “ How do women 
like Mrs. Bronckhorst come to marry men like 
Bronckhorst ? ” 

And my conundrum is the most unanswerable 
of the three. 


VENUS ANNODOMINI. 


And the years went on, as the years must do j 
But our great Diana was always new — 

Fresh, and blooming, and blonde, and fair. 

With azure eyes and with aureate hair ; 

And all the folk, as they came or went, 

Offered her praise to her heart’s content. 

Diana of Ephesus. 

She had nothing to do with Number Eighteen 
in the Braccio Nuovo of the Vatican, betweeh 
Visconti’s Ceres and the God of the Nile. She 
was purely an Indian deity — an Anglo-Indian 
deity, that is to say — and we called her the 
Venus Annodomini, to distinguish her from other 
Annodominis of the same everlasting order. 
There was a legend among the Hills that she 
had once been young ; but no living man was 
prepared to come forward and say boldly that the 
legend was true. Men rode up to Simla, and 
stayed, and went away and made their name and 
did their life’s work, and returned again to find 
the Venus Annodomini exactly as they had left 
her. She was as immutable as the Hills. But 
not quite so green. All that a girl of eighteen® 
could do in the way of riding, walking, dancing, 
picnicking and over-exertion generally, the Venus 
Annodomini did, and showed no sign of fatigue 
or trace of weariness. Besides perpetual youth, 
she had discovered, men said, the secret of per- 
petual health ; and her fame spread about the 
land. From a mere woman, she grew to be an 
Institution, insomuch that no young man could 
be said to be properly formed, who had not, at 
some time or another, worshiped at the shrine 
234 


Venus Annodomini 235 

of the Venus Annodomini. There was no one 
like her, though there were many imitations. 
Six years in her eyes were no more than six 
months to ordinary women ; and ten made less 
visible impression on her than does a week’s 
fever on an ordinary woman. Every one adored 
her, and in return she was pleasant and court- 
eous to nearly every one. Youth had been a 
habit of hers for so long, that she could not part 
with it — never realized, in fact, the necessity of 
parting with it — and took for her more chosen 
associates young people. 

Among the worshipers ot the Venus An- 
nodomini was young Gayerson. “Very Young 
Gayerson,” he was called to distinguish him 
from his father “ Young ” Gayerson, a Bengal 
Civilian, who affected the customs — as he had 
the heart — of youth. “Very Young” Gayerson 
was not content to worship placidly and for 
form’s sake, as the other young men did, or to 
accept a ride or a dance, or a talk from the 
Venus Annodomini in a properly humble and 
thankful spirit. He was exacting, and, there- 
fore, the Venus Annodomini repressed him. He 
worried himself nearly sick in a futile sort of 
way over her ; and his devotion and earnestness 
made him appear either shy or boisterous or 
rude, as his mood might vary, by the side of the 
older men who, with him, bowed before the 
Venus Annodomini. She was sorry for him. 
He reminded her of a lad who, three-and-twenty 
years ago, had professed a boundless devotion 
for her, and for whom in return she had felt 
something more than a week’s weakness. But 
that lad had fallen away and married another 
woman less than a year after he had^worshiped 


236 Plain Tales From the Hills 

her ; and the Venus Annodomini had almost — 
not quite — forgotten his name. “ Very Young” 
Gayerson had the same big blue eyes and the 
same way of pouting his underlip when he was 
excited or troubled. But the Venus Annodomini 
checked him sternly none the less. Too much 
zeal was a thing that she did not approve of ; 
preferring instead, a tempered and sober tender- 
ness. 

“ Very Young ” Gayerson was miserable, and 
took no trouble to conceal his wretchedness. 
He was in the Army — a Line regiment I think, 
but am not certain — and, since his face was a 
looking-glass and his forehead an open book, by 
reason of his innocence, his brothers in arms 
made his life a burden to him and embittered 
his naturally sweet disposition. No one except 
“Very Young” Gayerson, and he never told 
his views, knew how old “ Very Young ” Gayerson 
believed the Venus Annodomini to be. Perhaps 
he thought her five and twenty, or perhaps she 
told him that she was this age. “ Very Young ” 
Gayerson would have forded the Gugger in flood 
to carry her lightest word, and had implicit faith 
in her. Every one liked him, and everyone was 
sorry when they saw him so bound a slave of 
the Venus Annodomini. Every one, too, ad- 
mitted that it was not her fault ; for the Venus 
Annodomini differed from Mrs. Hauksbee and 
Mrs. Reiver in this particular — she never moved 
a finger to attract any one ; but, like Ninon de 
l’Enclos, all men were attracted to her. One 
could admire and respect Mrs. Hauksbee, de- 
spise and avoid Mrs. Reiver, but one was forced 
to adore the Venus Annodomini. 

“ Very Young ” Gayerson’s papa held a divi- 


Venus Annodomini 


237 


sion or a Collectorate or something administra- 
tive in a particularly unpleasant part of Bengal 
— full of Babus who edited newspapers proving 
that “ Young ” Gayerson was a “ Nero ” and a 
“ Scylla ” and a “ Charybdis ” ; and, in ad- 
dition to the Babus, there was a good deal of 
dysentery and cholera abroad for nine months 
of the year. “ Young ” Gayerson — he was about 
five and forty — rather liked Babus, they amused 
him, but he objected to dysentery, and when he 
could get away, went to Darjilling for the most 
part. This particular season he fancied that 
he would come up to Simla and see his boy. 
The boy was not altogether pleased. He told 
the Venus Annodomini that his father was com- 
ing up, and she flushed a little and said that she 
should be delighted to make his acquaintance. 
Then she looked long and thoughtfully at “Very 
Young” Gayerson ; because she was very, very 
sorry for him, and he was a very, very big idiot. 

“ My daughter is coming out in a fortnight, 
Mr. Gayerson,” she said. 

“ Your what! ” said he. 

“Daughter,” said the Venus Annodomini. 
“She’s been out for a year at Home already, 
and I want her to see a little of India. She is 
nineteen and a very sensible nice girl I believe.” 

“Very Young” Gayerson, who was a short 
twenty-two years old, nearly fell out of his chair 
with astonishment ; for he had persisted in be- 
lieving, against all belief, in the youth of the 
Venus Annodomini. She, with her back to the 
curtained window, watched the effect of her sen- 
tences and smiled. 

“Very Young” Gayerson’s papa came up 
twelve days later, and had not been in Simla 


238 Plain Tales From the Hills 

four and twenty hours, before two men, old ac- 
quaintances of his, had told him how “Very 
Young” Gayerson had been conducting himself. 

“ Young” Gayerson laughed a good deal, and 
inquired who the Venus Annodomini might be. 
Which proves that he had been living in Bengal 
where nobody knows anything except the rate of 
Exchange. Then he said “ boys will be boys,” 
and spoke to his son about the matter. “Very- 
Young ” Gayerson said that he felt wretched and 
unhappy; and “ Young ” Gayerson said that he 
repented of having helped to bring a fool into 
the world. He suggested that his son had bet- 
ter cut his leave short and go down to his duties. 
This led to an unfilial answer, and relations were 
strained, until “Young” Gayerson demanded 
that they should call on the Venus Annodomini. 
“ Very 'Young ” Gayerson went with his papa, 
feeling, somehow, uncomfortable and small. 

The Venus Annodomini received them gra- 
ciously and “Young” Gayerson said: — “By 
Jove! It’s Kitty!” “Very Young” Gayerson 
would have listened for an explanation, if his 
time had not been taken up with trying to talk 
to a large, handsome, quiet, well-dressed girl — 
introduced’ to him by the Venus Annodomini as 
her daughter. She was far older in manner, 
style and repose than “Very Young” Gayerson; 
and, as he realized this thing, he felt sick. 

Presently, he heard the Venus Annodomini 
saying : — “ Do you know that your son is one of 
my most devoted admirers ? ” 

“I don’t wonder,” said “Young” Gayerson. 
Here he raised his voice : — “ He follows his 
father’s footsteps. Didn’t I worship the ground 
you trod on, ever so long ago, Kitty — and you 


Venus Annodomini 


239 

haven’t changed since then. How strange it all 
seems ! ” 

“Very Young” Gayerson said nothing. His 
conversation with the daughter of the Venus 
Annodomini was, through the rest of the call, 
fragmentary and disjointed. 

• “ At five to-morrow then,” said the Venus An- 
nodomini. “ And mind you are punctual.” 

“At five punctually,” said “ Young ” Gayer- 
son. “ You can lend your old father a horse, I 
dare say, youngster, can’t you ? I’m going for 
a ride to-morrow afternoon.” 

“Certainly,” said “Very Young” Gayerson. 
“ I am going down to-morrow morning. My 
ponies are at your service, Sir.” 

The Venus Annodomini looked at him across 
the half-light of the room, and her big gray eyes 
filled with moisture. She rose and shook hands 
with him. 

“ Good-by, Tom,” whispered the Venus Anno- 
domini. 


THE BISARA OF POOREE. 


Little Blind Fish, thou art marvelous wise, 

Little Blind Fish, who put out thy eyes ? 

Open thine ears while I whisper my wish— 

Bring me a lover, thou little Blind Fish. 

The Charm of the Bisara. 

Some natives say that it came from the other 
side of Kulu, where the eleven-inch Temple Sap- 
phire is. Others that it was made at the Devil- 
Shrine of Ao-Chung in Thibet, was stolen by a 
Kafir, from him by a Gurkha, from him again 
by a Lahouli, from him by a khitmatgar , and 
by this latter sold to an Englishman, so all its 
virtue was lost : because, to work properly, the 
Bisara of Pooree must be stolen — with bloodshed 
if possible, but, at any rate, stolen. 

These stories of the coming into India are all 
false. It was made at Pooree ages since — the 
manner of its making would fill a small book — 
was stolen by one of the Temple dancing-girls 
there, for her own purposes, and then passed on 
from hand to hand, steadily northward, till it 
reached Hanli : always bearing the same name 
— the Bisara of Pooree. In shape it is a tiny, 
square box of silver, studded outside with eight 
small balas-rubies. Inside the box, which opens 
with a spring, is a little, eyeless fish, carved from 
some sort of dark, shiny nut and wrapped in a 
shred of faded gold-cloth. That is the Bisara ot 
Pooree, and it were better for a man to take a 
king cobra in his hand than to touch the Bisara 
of Pooree. 

240 


The Bisara of Pooree 


241 


All kinds of magic are out of date, and done 
away with except in India where nothing changes 
in spite of the shiny, toy-scum stuff that people 
call “civilization.” Any man who knows about 
the Bisara of Pooree will tell you what its powers 
are — always supposing that it has been honestly 
stolen. It is the only regularly working, trust- 
worthy love-charm in the country, with one ex- 
ception. 

[The other charm is in the hands of a trooper 
of the Nizam’s Horse, at a place called Tuprani, 
due north of Hyderabad.] This can be de- 
pended upon for a fact. Some one else may ex- 
plain it. 

If the Bisara be not stolen, but given or bought 
or found, it turns against its owner in three 
years, and leads to ruin or death. This is 
another fact which you may explain when you 
have time. Meanwhile, you can laugh at it. At 
present, the Bisara is safe on an ekka- pony’s 
neck, inside the blue bead-necklace that keeps 
off the Evil-eye. If the ekka - driver ever finds it, 
and wears it, or gives it to his wife, I am sorry 
for him. 

A very dirty hill-cooly woman, with goitre, 
owned it at Theog in 1884. It came into Simia 
from the north before Churton’s khitmatgar 
bought it, and sold it, for three times its silver- 
value, to Churton, who collected curiosities. The 
servant knew no more what he had bought than 
the master ; but a man looking over Churton’s 
collection of curiosities — Churton was an Assist- 
ant Commissioner by the way — saw and held his 
tongue. He was an Englishman ; but knew 
how to believe. Which shows that he was dif- 
ferent from most Englishmen. He knew that it 
16 


242 Plain Tales From the Hills 

was dangerous to have any share in the little 
box when working or dormant ; for unsought 
Love is a terrible gift. 

Pack — “Grubby” Pack, as we used to call 
him — was, in every way, a nasty little man who 
must have crawled into the Army by mistake. 
He was three inches taller than his sword,' but 
not half so strong. And the sword was a fifty- 
shilling, tailor-made one. Nobody liked him, and, 
I suppose, it was his wizenedness and worthless- 
ness that made him fall so hopelessly in love with 
Miss Hollis, who was good and sweet, and five 
foot seven in her tennis-shoes. He was not con- 
tent with falling in love quietly, but brought all 
the strength of his miserable little nature into the 
business. If he had not been so objectionable, 
one might have pitied him. He vapored, and 
fretted, and fumed, and trotted up and down, and 
tried to make himself pleasing in Miss Hollis’s 
big, quiet, gray eyes, and failed. It was one of 
the cases that you sometimes meet, even in this 
country where we marry by Code, of a really 
blind attachment all on one side, without the 
faintest possibility of return. Miss Hollis looked 
on Pack as some sort of vermin running about 
the road. He had no prospects beyond Captain’s 
pay, and no wits to help that out by one anna. 
In a large-sized man, love like this would have 
been touching. In a good man it would have 
been grand. He being what he was, it was only 
a nuisance. 

You will believe this much. What you will 
not believe, is what follows : Churton, and The 
Man who Knew what the Bisara was, were 
lunching at the Simla Club together. Churton 
was complaining of life in general. His best 


The Bisara of Pooree 243 

mare had rolled out of stable down the hill and 
had broken her back ; his decisions were being 
reversed by the upper Courts more than an As- 
sistant Commissioner of eight years’ standing 
has a right to expect ; he knew liver and fever, 
and, for weeks past, had felt out of sorts. Alto- 
gether, he was disgusted and disheartened. 

Simla Club dining-room is built, as all the 
world knows, in two sections, with an arch- 
arrangement dividing them. Come in, turn to 
your own left, take the table under the window, 
and you cannot see any one who has come in, 
turned to the right, and taken a table on the 
right side of the arch. Curiously enough, every 
word that you say can be heard, not only by the 
other diner, but by the servants beyond the 
screen through which they bring dinner. This 
is worth knowing : an echoing-room is a trap to 
be forewarned against. 

Half in fun, and half hoping to be believed, 
The Man who Knew told Churton the story of 
the Bisara of Pooree at rather greater length 
than I have told it to you in this place ; winding 
up with a suggestion that Churton might as well 
throw the little box down the hill and see whether 
all his troubles would go with it. In ordinary 
ears, English ears, the tale was only an interest- 
ing bit of folk-lore. Churton laughed, said that 
he felt better for his tiffin, and went out. Pack 
had been tiffining by himself to the right of the 
arch, and had heard everything. He was nearly 
mad with his absurd infatuation for Miss Hollis, 
that all Simla had been laughing about. 

It is a curious thing that, when a man hates or 
loves beyond reason, he is ready to go beyond 
reason to gratify his feelings. Which he would 


244 Plain Tales From the Hills 

not do for money or power merely. Depend 
upon it, Solomon would never have built altars 
to Ashtaroth and all those ladies with queer 
names, if there had not been trouble of some kind 
in his ze7iana t and nowhere else. But this is 
beside the story. The facts of the case are these : 
Pack called on Churton next day when Churton 
was out, left his card, and stole the Bisara of 
Pooree from its place under the clock on the 
mantel-piece ! Stole it like the thief he was by 
nature. Three days later, all Simla was electri- 
fied by the news that Miss Hollis had accepted 
Pack — the shriveled rat, Pack ! Do you desire 
clearer evidence than this ? The Bisara of 
Pooree had been stolen, and it worked as it had 
always done when won by foul means. 

There are three or four times in a man’s life 
when he is justified in meddling with other 
people’s affairs to play Providence. 

The Man who Knew felt that he was justified ; 
but believing and acting on a belief are quite 
different things. The insolent satisfaction of 
Pack as he ambled by the side of Miss Hollis, 
and Churton’s striking release from liver, as soon 
as the Bisara of Pooree had gone, decided the 
Man. He explained to Churton, and Churton 
laughed, because he was not brought up to be- 
lieve that men on the Government House List 
steal — at least little things. But the miraculous 
acceptance by Miss Hollis of that tailor, Pack, 
decided him to take steps on suspicion. He 
vowed that he only wanted to find out where his 
ruby-studded silver box had vanished to. You 
cannot accuse a man on the Government House 
List of stealing. And if you rifle his room, you 
are a thief yourself. Churton, prompted by The 


The Bisara of Pooree 245 

Man who Knew, decided on burglary. If he 
found nothing in Pack’s room .... but it is 
not nice to think of what would have happened 
in that case. 

Pack went to a dance at Benmore — Benmore 
was Benmore in those days, and not an office — 
and danced fifteen waltzes out of twenty-two with 
Miss Hollis. Churton and The Man took all the 
keys that they could lay hands on, and went to 
Pack’s room in the hotel, certain that his serv- 
ants would be away. Pack was a cheap soul. 
He had not purchased a decent cash-box to 
keep his papers in, but one. of those native imi- 
tations that you buy for ten rupees. It opened 
to any sort of key, and there at the bottom, under 
Pack’s Insurance Policy, lay the Bisara of 
Pooree ! 

Churton called Pack names, put the Bisara of 
Pooree in his pocket, and went to the dance with 
The Man. At least, he came in time for supper, 
and saw the beginning of the end in Miss Hollis’s 
eyes. She was hysterical after supper, and was 
taken away by her Mama. 

At the dance, with the abominable Bisara in 
his pocket, Churton twisted his foot on one of the 
steps leading down to the old Rink, and had to 
be sent home in a ’rickshaw, grumbling. He 
did not believe in the Bisara of Pooree any the 
more for this manifestation, but he sought out 
Pack and called him some ugly names ; and 
“ thief” was the mildest of them. Pack took the 
names with the nervous smile of a little man who 
wants both soul and body to resent an insult, and 
went his way. There was no public scandal. 

A week later, Pack got his definite dismissal 
from Miss Hollis. There had been a mistake in 


246 Plain Tales From the Hills 

the placing of her affections, she said. So he 
went away to Madras, where he can do no great 
harm even if he lives to be a Colonel. 

Churton insisted upon The Man who Knew 
taking the Bisara of Pooree as a gift. The Man 
took it, went down to the Cart-Road at once, 
found an ekka - pony with a blue bead-necklace, 
fastened the Bisara of Pooree inside the necklace 
with a piece of shoe-string and thanked Heaven 
that he was rid of a danger. Remember, in 
case you ever find it, that you must not destroy 
the Bisara of Pooree. I have not time to explain 
why just now, but the power lies in the little 
wooden fish. Mister Gubernatis or Max Muller 
could tell you more about it than I. 

You wil^say that all this story is made up. 
Very well. If ever you come across a little, 
silver, ruby-studded box, seven-eighths of an inch 
long by three-quarters wide, with a dark-brown 
wooden fish, wrapped in gold cloth, inside it, 
keep it. Keep it for three years, and then you 
will discover for yourself whether my story is 
true or false. 

Better still, steal it as Pack did, and you will 
be sorry that you had not killed yourself in the 
beginning. 


THE GATE OF THE HUNDRED 
SORROWS 


THE GATE OF THE HUNDRED SORROWS. 


“If i can attain Heaven for a pice, why should you be envious ? ” 

Opium Smoker's Proverb. 

This is no work of mine. My friend, Gabral 
Misquitta, the half-caste, spoke it all, between 
moonset and morning, six weeks before he died ; 
and I took it down from his mouth as he an- 
swered my questions, so : — 

It lies between the Copper-smith’s Gully and 
the pipe-stem sellers’ quarter, within a hundred 
yards, too, as the crow flies, of the Mosque of 
Wazir Khan. I don’t mind telling any one this 
much, but I defy him to find the Gate, however 
well he may think he knows the City. You 
might even go through the very gully it stands 
in a hundred ticnes, and be none the wiser. We 
used to call the gully “ the Gully of the Black 
Smoke,” but its native name is altogether differ- 
ent, of course. A loaded donkey couldn’t pass 
between the walls ; and, at one point, just before 
you reach the Gate, a bulged house-front makes 
people go along all sideways. 

It isn’t really a gate though. It’s a house. 
Old Fung-Tching had it first five years ago. He 
was a boot-maker in Calcutta. They say that 
he murdered his wife there when he was drunk. 
That was why he dropped bazar-rum and took 
to the Black Smoke instead. Later on, he came 
up north and opened the Gate as a house where 
you could get your smoke in peace and quiet. 
Mind you, it was a pukka , respectable opium- 

247 


248 Plain Tales From the Hills 

house, and not one of those stifling, sweltering 
chandoo-khanas , that you can find all over the 
City. No ; the old man knew his business thor- 
oughly, and he was most clean for a Chinaman. 
He was a one-eyed little chap, not much more 
than five feet high, and both his middle fingers 
were gone. All the same, he was the handiest 
man at rolling black pills I have ever seen. 
Never seemed to be touched by the Smoke, 
either ; and what he took day and night, night 
and day, was a caution. I’ve been at it five 
years, and I can do my fair share ot the Smoke 
with anyone ; but I was a child to Fung-Tching 
that way. All the same, the old man was keen 
on his money, very keen ; and that’s what I can’t 
understand. I heard he saved a good deal be- 
fore he died, but his nephew has got all that 
now ; and the old man’s gone back to China to 
be buried. 

He kept the big upper room, where his best 
customers gathered, as neat as a new pin. In 
one corner used to stand Fung-Tching's Joss — 
almost as ugly as Fung-Tching — and there were 
always sticks burning under his nose ; but you 
never smelt ’em when the pipes were going 
thick. Opposite the Joss was Fung-Tching’s 
coffin. He had spent a good deal of his savings 
on that, and whenever a new man came to the 
Gate he was always introduced to it. It was 
lacquered black, with red and gold writings on it, 
and I’ve heard that Fung-Tching brought it out 
all the way from China. I don’t know whether 
that’s true or not, but I know that, if I came first 
in the evening, I used to spread my mat just at 
the foot of it. It was a quiet corner you see, and 
a sort of breeze from the gully came in at the 


Gate of the Hundred Sorrows 249 

window now and then. Besides the mats, there 
was no other furniture in the room — only the 
coffin, and the old Joss all green and blue and 
purple with age and polish. 

Fung-Tching never told us why he called 
the place “ The Gate of the Hundred Sorrows.” 
(He was the only Chinaman I know who used 
bad-sounding fancy names. Most of them are 
flowery. As you’ll see in Calcutta.) We used 
to find that out for ourselves. Nothing grows 
on you so much, if you’re white, as the Black 
Smoke. A yellow man is made different. Opium 
doesn’t tell on him scarcely at all ; but white 
and black suffer a good deal. Of course, there 
are some people that the Smoke doesn’t touch 
any more than tobacco would at first. They 
just dose a bit, as one would fall asleep natu- 
rally, and next morning they are almost fit for 
work. Now, I was one of that sort when I 
began, but I’ve been at it for five years pretty 
steadily, and it’s different now. There was an 
old aunt of mine, down Agra way, and she left 
me a little at her death. About sixty rupees a 
month secured. Sixty isn’t much. I can recol- 
lect a time, ’seems hundreds and hundreds of 
years ago, that I was getting my three hundred 
a month, and pickings, when I was working on 
a big timber contract in Calcutta. 

I didn’t stick to that work for long. The 
Black Smoke does not allow of much other busi- 
ness ; and even though I am very little affected 
by it, as men go, I couldn’t do a day’s work now 
to save my life. After all, sixty rupees is what 
I want. When old Fung-Tching was alive he 
used to draw the money for me, give me about 
half of it to live on (I eat very little), and the 


250 Plain Tales From the Hills 

rest he kept himself. I was free of the Gate at 
any time of the day and night, and could smoke 
and sleep there when I liked, so I didn’t care. I 
know the old man made a good thing out of it ; 
but that’s no matter. Nothing matters much to 
me ; and, besides, the money always came fresh 
and fresh each month. 

There was ten of us met at the Gate when the 
place was first opened. Me, and two Baboos 
from a Government Office somewhere in Anar- 
kulli, but they got the sack and couldn’t pay (no 
man who has to work in the daylight can do the 
Black Smoke for any length of time straight on) ; 
a Chinaman that was Fung-Tching’s nephew ; a 
bazar-woman that had got a lot of money some- 
how ; an English loafer — Mac-Somebody, I think, 
but I have forgotten — that smoked heaps, but 
never seemed to pay anything (they said he had 
saved Fung-Tching’s life at some trial in Cal- 
cutta when he was a barrister) : another Eura- 
sian, like myself, from Madras ; a half-caste 
woman, and a couple of men who said they had 
come from the North. I think they must have 
been Persians or Afghans or something. There 
are not more than five of us living now, but we 
come regular. I don’t know what happened to 
the Baboos ; but tlie bazar-woman she died after 
six months of the Gate, and I think Fung-Tching 
took her bangles and nose-ring for himself. But 
I’m not certain. The Englishman, he drank as 
well as smoked, and he dropped off. One of the 
Persians got killed in a row at night by the big 
well near the mosque a long time ago, and the 
Police shut up the well, because they said it was 
full of foul air. They found him dead at the 
bottom of it. So, you see, there is only me, the 


Gate of the Hundred Sorrows 251 

Chinaman, the half-caste woman that we call the 
Memsahib (she used to live with Fung-Tching), 
the other Eurasian, and one of the Persians. 
The Memsahib looks very old now. I think she 
was a young woman when the Gate was opened ; 
but we are all old for the matter of that. Hun- 
dreds and hundreds of years old. It is very hard 
*to keep count of time in the Gate, and besides, 
time doesn’t matter to me. I draw my sixty 
rupees fresh and fresh every month. A very, 
very long while ago, when I used to be getting 
three hundred and fifty rupees a month, and 
pickings, on a big timber-contract at Calcutta, I 
had a wife of sorts. But she’s dead now. Peo- 
ple said that I killed her by taking to the Black 
Smoke. Perhaps I did, but it’s so long since 
that it doesn’t matter. Sometimes when I first 
came to the Gate, I used to feel sorry for it ; but 
that’s all over and done with long ago, and I 
draw my sixty rupees fresh and fresh every 
month, and am quite happy. Not dru?ik happy, 
you know, but always quiet and soothed and 
contented. 

How did I take to it ? It began at Calcutta. 
I used to try it in my own house, just to see what 
it was like. I never went very far, but I think 
my wife must have died then. Anyhow, I found 
myself here, and got to know Fung-Tching. I 
don’t remember rightly how that came about ; 
but he told me of the Gate and I used to go there, 
and, somehow, I have never got away from it 
since. Mind you, though, the Gate was a re- 
spectable place in Fung-Tching’s time where you 
could be comfortable, and not at all like the 
chandoo-khaiias where the niggers go. No ; it 
was clean and quiet, and not crowded. Of 


252 Plain Tales From the Hills 

course, there were others besides us ten and the 
man ; but we always had a mat apiece, with a 
wadded woolen head-piece, all covered with 
black and red dragons and things ; just like the 
coffin in the corner. 

At the end of one’s third pipe the dragons used 
to move about and fight. I’ve watched ’em, 
many and many a night through. I used to 
regulate my Smoke that way, and now it takes 
a dozen pipes to make ’em stir. Besides, they 
are all torn and dirty, like the mats, and old 
Fung-Tching is dead. He died a couple of 
years ago, and gave me the pipe I always use 
now — a silver one, with queer beasts crawling 
up and down the receiver-bottle below the cup. 
Before that, I think, I used a big bamboo stem 
with a copper cup, a very small one, and a green 
jade mouthpiece. It was a little thicker than a 
walking-stick stem, and smoked sweet, very 
sweet. The bamboo seemed to suck up the 
smoke. Silver doesn’t, and I’ve got to clean it 
out now and then, that’s a great deal of trouble, 
but I smoke it for the old man’s sake. He must 
have made a good thing out of me, but he 
always gave me clean mats and pillows, and the 
best stuff you could get anywhere. 

When he died, his nephew Tsin-ling took up 
the Gate, and he called it the “ Temple of the 
Three Possessions ; ” but we old ones speak of 
it as the “ Hundred Sorrows,” all the same. The 
nephew does things very shabbily, and I think 
the Memsahib must help him. She lives with 
him ; same as she used to do with the old man. 
The two let in all sorts of low people, niggers 
and all, and the Black Smoke isn't as good as it 
used to be. I’ve found burnt bran in my pipe 


Gate of the Hundred Sorrows 253 

over and over again. The old man would have 
died it that had happened in his time. Besides, 
the room is never cleaned, and all the mats are 
torn and cut at the edges. The coffin is gone — 
gone to China again — with the old man and two 
ounces of smoke inside it, in case he should want 
’em on the way. 

The Joss doesn’t get so many sticks burnt 
under his nose as he used to ; that’s a sign of 
ill-luck, as sure as Death. He’s all brown, too, 
and no one ever attends to him. That’s the 
Memsahid’s work, I know ; because, when Tsin- 
ling tried to burn gilt paper before him, she said 
it was a waste of money, and, if he kept a stick 
burning very slowly, the Joss wouldn’t know the 
difference. So now we’ve got the sticks mixed 
with a lot of glue, and they take half-an-hour 
longer to burn, and smell stinky. Let alone the 
smell of the room by itself. No business can 
get on if they try that sort of thing. The Joss 
doesn’t like it. I can see that. Late at night, 
sometimes, he turns all sorts of queer colors — 
blue and green and red — just as he used to do 
when old Fung-Tching was alive ; and he rolls 
his eyes and stamps his feet like a devil. 

I don’t know why I don’t leave the place and 
smoke quietly in a little room of my own in the 
bazar. Most like, Tsin-ling would kill me if I 
went away — he draws my sixty rupees now — and 
besides, it’s so much trouble, and I’ve grown to 
be very fond of the Gate. It’s not much to look 
at. Not what it was in the old man’s time, but 
I couldn’t leave it. I’ve seen so many comn in 
and out. And I’ve seen so many die here on 
the mats that I should be afraid of dying in the 
open now. I’ve seen some things that people 


254 Plain Tales From the Hills 

would call strange enough ; but nothing is strange 
when you’re on the Black Smoke, except the 
Black Smoke. And if it was, it wouldn’t matter. 
Fung-Tching used to be very particular about 
his people, and never got in any one who’d give 
trouble by dying messy and such. But the neph- 
ew isn’t half so careful. He tells everywhere 
that he keeps a “ first-chop ” house. Never 
tries to get men in quietly, and make them com- 
fortable like Fung-Tching did. That’s why the 
Gate is getting a little bit more known than it 
used to be. Among the niggers of course. The 
nephew daren’t get a white, or, for matter of 
that, a mixed skin into the place. He has to 
keep us three of course — me and the Memsahib 
and the other Eurasian. We’re fixtures. But 
he wouldn’t give us credit for a pipeful — not for 
anything. 

One of these days, I hope, I shall die in the 
Gate. The Persian and the Madras man are 
terribly shaky now. They’ve got a boy to light 
their pipes for them. I always do that myself. 
Most like, I shall see them carried out before 
me. I don’t think I shall ever outlive the Mem- 
sahib or Tsin-ling. Women last longer than 
men at the Black-Smoke, and Tsin-ling has a 
deal of the old man’s blood in him, though he 
does smoke cheap stuff. The bazar-woman knew 
when she was going two days before her time ; 
and she died on a clean mat with a nicely 
wadded pillow, and the old man hung up her 
pipe just above the Joss. He was always fond 
of her, I fancy. But he took her bangles just the 
same. 

I should like to die like the bazar-woman — on 
a clean, cool mat with a pipe of good stuff be- 


Gate of the Hundred Sorrows 255 

tween my lips. When I feel I’m going, I shall 
ask Tsin-ling for them, and he can draw my 
sixty rupees a month, fresh and fresh, as long as 
he pleases. Then I shall lie back, quiet and 
comfortable, and watch the black and red dragons 
have their last big fight together ; and then .... 

Well, it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters 
much to me — only I wish Tsin-ling wouldn’t put 
bran into the Black Smoke. 


THE MADNESS OF PRIVATE ORTHERIS. 


Oh ! Where would I be when my froat was dry ? 

Oh ! Where would I be when the bullets fly ? 

Oh ! Where would I be when I come to die ? 

Why, 

Somewheres anigh my chum. 

If ’e’s liquor ’e’ll give me some, 

If Pm dyin’ ’e’ll ’old my ’ead, 

An’ ’e’ll write ’em ’Ome when I’m dead. — 

Gawd send us a trusty chum ! 

Barrack Room Ballad. 

My friends Mulvaney and Ortheris had gone 
on a shooting-expedition for one day. Learoyd 
was still in hospital, recovering from fever picked ‘ 
up in Burma. They sent me an invitation to j 
join them, and were genuinely pained when I : 
brought beer — almost enough beer to satisfy two ] 
Privates of the Line .... and Me. 

“ ’Twasn’t for that we bid you welkim, Sorr,” 
said Mulvaney sulkily. “ ’Twas for the pleasure 1 
av your comp’ny.” 

Ortheris came to the rescue with : — “ Well, ’e i 
won’t be none the worse for bringin’ liquor with 1 
’m. We ain’t a file o’ Dooks. We’re bloomin’ I 
Tommies, ye cantankris Hirishman ; an ’ere’s ] 
your very good ’ealth ! ” 

We shot all the forenoon, and killed two pariah- ; 
dogs, lour green parrots, sitting, one kite by the j 
burning-ghaut, one snake flying, one mud-turtle, 1 
and eight crows. Game was plentiful. Then j 
we sat down to tiffin — •* bull-mate an’ bran- l 
bread,” Mulvaney called it — by the side of the 
river, and took pot shots at the crocodiles in the 
intervals of cutting up the food with our only f 
pocket-knife. Then we drank up all the beer, 
256 




Madness of Private Ortheris 257 

and threw the bottles into the water and fired at 
them. After that, we eased belts and stretched 
ourselves on the warm sand and smoked. We 
were too lazy to continue shooting. 

Ortheris heaved a big sigh, as he lay on his 
stomach with his head between his fists. Then 
he swore quietly into the blue sky. 

“ Fwhat’s that for ? ” said Mulvaney. ** Have 
ye not drunk enough ? ” 

“ Tott’nim Court Road, an’ a gal I fancied 
there. Wot’s the good of sodgerin’ ?” 

“Orth’ris, me son,” said Mulvaney hastily, 
“ ’tis more than likely you’ve got throuble in 
your inside with the beer. I feel that way mesilf 
whin my liver gets rusty.” 

Ortheris went on slowly, not heeding the inter- 
ruption : — 

“ I’m a Tommy — a bloomin’, eight-anna, dog- 
stealin’, Tommy, with a number instead of a 
decent name. Wot’s the good o’ me ? If I ’ad 
a stayed at ’Ome, I might a’ married that gal and 
a kep’ a’ little shorp in the ’Ammersmith’ Igh. — 
‘S Orth’ris, Prac-ti-cal Taxi-der-mist.’ With a 
stuff fox, like they ’as in the Haylesbury Dairies, 
in the winder, an’ a little case of blue and yaller 
glass-heyes, an’ a little wife to call, ‘ shorp ! ’ 
‘shorp ! 5 when the door bell rung. As it his. 
I’m on’y a Tommy — a Bloomin’, Gawd-forsaken, 
Beer-swillin’, Tommy. ‘ Rest on your harms — 

’ versed . Stan’ at — hease Shun. ‘Verse — 
harms. Right an’ lef — tarrn. Slow — inarch. 

' Alt—; front. Rest on your harms — ’ versed . 
With blank-cartridge — load.' An’ that’s the end 
o’ me.” He was quoting fragments from Funeral 
Parties’ Orders. 

“ Stop ut 1 ” shouted Mulvaney. “ Whin you’ve 
17 


258 Plain Tales From the Hills 

fired into nothin’ as often as me, over a better 
man than yoursilf, you will not make a mock av 
thim orders. 'Tis worse than whistlin’ the Dead 
March in barricks. An’ you full as a tick, an’ 
the sun cool, an’ all an’ all ! I take shame for 
you. You’re no better than a Pagin — you an’ 
your firin’-parties an’ your glass-eyes. Won’t 
you stop ut, Sorr ? ” 

What could I do ! Could I tell Ortheris any- 
thing that he did not know of the pleasures of 
his life ? I was not a Chaplain nor a Subaltern, 
and Ortheris had a right to speak as he thought 
fit. 

“ Let him run, Mulvaney,” I said. “ It’s the 
beer.” 

“ No ! 'Tisn’t the beer,” said Mulvaney. “ I 
know fwhat’s cornin’. He’s tuk this way now an’ 
agin, an’ it’s bad — it’s bad — for I’m fond av the 
bhoy.” 

Indeed, Mulvaney seemed needlessly anxious ; 
but I knew that he looked after Ortheris in a 
fatherly way. 

“ Let me talk, let me talk,” said Ortheris, 
dreamily. “ D’you stop your parrit screamin’ of 
a ’ot day, when the cage is a-cookin’ ’is pore 
little pink toes orf, Mulvaney ? ” 

“ Pink toes ! D’ye mane to say you’ve pink 
toes under your bullswools, ye blandanderin,’ ” 
— Mulvaney gathered himself together for a 
terrific denunciation — “ school-misthress ! Pink 
toes ! How much Bass wid the label did that 
ravin’ child dhrink ? ” 

“ ’Tain’t Bass,” said Ortheris. “ It’s a bitterer 
beer nor that. It’s ’ome-sickness ! ” 

“ Hark to him ! An’ he’s goin’ Home in the 
Sherapis in the inside av four months ! ” 


Madness of Private Ortheris 259 

“ I don’t care. It’s all one to me. ’Ow d’you 
know I ain’t ’fraid o’ dyin’ ’fore I gets my 
papers ? ” He recommenced, in a sing-song 
voice, the Funeral Orders. 

I had never seen this side of Ortheris’s char- 
acter before, but evidently Mulvaney had, and 
attached serious importance to it. While Or- 
theris babbled, with his head on his arms, Mul- 
vaney whispered to me : 

“ He’s always tuk this way whin he’s been 
checked overmuch by the childher they make 
Sarjints nowadays. That ’an havin’ nothin to 
do. I can’t make ut out anyways.” 

“ Well, what does it matter ? Let him talk 
himself through.” 

Ortheris began singing a parody of “ The 
Ramrod Corps,” full of cheerful allusions to 
battle, murder and sudden death. He looked 
out across the river as he sang ; and his face 
was quite strange to me. Mulvaney caught me 
by the elbow to ensure attention. 

“ Matther ? It matthers everything ! ’Tis 
some sort av fit that’s on him. I’ve seen ut. 
’Twill hould him all this night, an’ in the middle 
av it, he’ll get out av his cot and go rakin’ in the 
rack for his 'coutrements. Thin he’ll come over 
to me an’ say : — ‘ I’mgoin’ to Bombay. Answer 
for me in the mornin’.’ Thin me an’ him will 
fight as we’ve done before — him to go an’ me to 
hould him — an’ so we’ll both come on the books 
for disturbin’ in barricks. I’ve belted him, an’ 
I’ve bruk his head, an’ I’ve talked to him, but ’tis 
no manner av use whin the fit’s on him. He’s 
as good a bhoy as ever stepped whin his mind’s 
clear. I know fwhat’s cornin’, though, this night 
in barricks. Lord send he doesn’t loose off whin 


260 Plain Tales From the Hills 


I rise for to knock him down. ’Tis that that’s 
in my mind day an’ night.” 

This put the case in a much less pleasant light, 
and fully accounted for Mulvaney’s anxiety. He 
seemed to be trying to coax Ortheris out of the 
“ fit ” ; for he shouted down the bank where the 
boy was lying : — 

“ Listen now, you wid the ‘ pore pink toes ’ an 
the glass eyes! Did you shwim the Irriwaddy at 
night, bellin’ me, as a bhoy shud ; or were you 
hidin’ under a bed, as you was at Ahmed Kheyl? ” 

This was at once a gross insult and a direct 
lie, and Mulvaney meant it to bring on a fight. 
But Ortheris seemed shut up i n some sort of 
trance. He answered slowly, without a sign of 
irritation, in the same cadenced voice as he had 
used for his firing-party orders : — 

“ Hi swum the Irriwaddy in the night, as you 
know, for to take the town of Lungtungpen, 
nakid an’ without fear. Hand where I was at 
Ahmed Kheyl you know, and four bloomin’ 
Pathans know too. But that was summat to do, 
an’ I didn’t think o’ dyin’. Now I’m sick to go 
’Ome — go ’Ome — go ’Ome ! No, I ain’t mammy 
sick, because my uncle brung me up, but I’m 
sick for London again ; sick for the sounds of 
’er ; an’ the sights of ’er, and the stinks of ’er ; 
orange-peel and hasphalte an’ gas cornin’ in over 
Vaux’all Bridge. Sick for the rail goin’ down to 
Box’Ill, with your gal on your knee an’ a new 
clay pipe in your face. That, an’ the Stran’ 
lights where you knows ev’ryone, an’ the Copper 
that takes you up is a old friend that tuk you up 
before, when you was a little, smitchy boy, lying 
loose ’tween the Temple an’ the Dark Harches. 
No bloomin’ guard-mountin’, no bloomin’ rotten- 


Madness of Private Ortheris 261 


stone, nor khaki, an’ yourself your own master 
with a gal to take an’ see the Humaners prac- 
tisin’ ahookin dead corpses out of the Serpentine 
o’ Sundays. An’ I lef ’ all that for to serve the 
Widder beyond the seas where there ain’t no 
women and there ain’t no liquor worth ’avin’, 
and there ain’t nothin’ to see, nor do, nor say, 
nor feel, nor think. Lord love you, Stanley 
Orth’ris, but you’re a bigger bloomin’ fool than 
the rest o’ the reg’ment and Mulvaney wired to- 
gether ! There’s the Widder sittin’ at ’Ome 
with a gold crown’d on ’er ’ead ; and ’ere am 
Hi, Stanley Orth’ris, the Widder’s property, a 
rottin' FOOL ! ” 

His voice rose at the end of the sentence, and 
he wound up with a six-shot Anglo-Vernacular 
oath. Mulvaney said nothing, but looked at me 
as if he expected that I could bring peace to 
poor Ortheris’s troubled brain. 

I remembered once at Rawal Pindi having 
seen a man, nearly mad with drink, sobered by 
being made a fool of. Some regiments may 
know what I mean. I hoped that we might 
shake off Ortheris in the same way, though he 
was perfectly sober : So I said : — 

“ What’s the use of grousing there, and speak- 
ing against The Widow ? ” 

“ I didn’t ! ” said Ortheris. “ S’elp me Gawd, 
I never said a word agin ’er, an’ I wouldn’t — not 
if I was to desert this minute ! ” 

Here was my opening. “ Well, you meant to, 
anyhow. What’s the use of cracking on for 
nothing ? Would you slip it now if you got the 
chance ? ” 

“ On’y try me ! ” said Ortheris, jumping to his 
feet as if he had been stung. 


262 Plain Tales From the Hills 


Mulvaney jumped too. “ F what are you going 
to do ? ” said he. 

“ Help Ortheris down to Bombay or Karachi, 
whichever he likes. You can report that he 
separated from you before tiffin, and left his gun 
on the bank here ! ” 

“ I’m to report that — am I ? ” said Mulvaney, 
slowly. “ Very well. If Orth’ris manes to de- 
sert now, and will desert now, an’ you, Sorr, 
who have been a friend to me an’ to him, will 
help him to ut, I, Terence Mulvaney, on my oath 
which I’ve never bruk yet, will report as you 
say. But ” — here he stepped up to Ortheris, 
and shook the stock of the fowling-piece in his 
face — “your fistes help you, Stanley Orth’ris, if 
ever I come across you agin ! ” 

“ I don’t care ! ” said Ortheris. “ I’m sick o’ 
this dorg’s life. Give me a chanst. Don’t play 
with me. Le’ me go ! ” 

“Strip,” said I, “and change with me, and 
then I’ll tell you what to do.” 

I hoped that the absurdity of this would check 
Ortheris ; but he had kicked off his ammunition- 
boots and got rid of his tunic almost before I 
had loosed my shirt-collar. Mulvaney gripped 
me by the arm : — 

“ The fit’s on him : the fit’s workin’ on him 
still. By my Honor and Sowl, we shall be ac- 
cessiry to a desartion yet ; only twenty-eight 
days, as you say, Sorr, or fifty-six, but think o’ 
the shame — the black shame to him an’ me ! ” 
I had never seen Mulvaney so excited. 

But Ortheris was quite calm, and, as soon as 
he had exchanged clothes with me, and I stood 
up a Private of the Line, he said shortly : — 
“Now! Come on. What nex’ ? D’ye mean 


Madness of Private Ortheris 263 

fair. What must I do to get out o’ this ere a 
Hell ? ” 

I told him that, if he would wait for two or 
three hours near the river, I would ride into the 
Station and come back with one hundred rupees. 
He would, with that money in his pocket, walk 
to the nearest side-station on the line, about live 
miles away, and would there take a first-class 
ticket for Karachi. Knowing that he had no 
money on him when he went out shooting, his 
regiment would not immediately wire to the sea- 
ports, but would hunt for him in the native vil- 
lages near the river. Further, no one would 
think of seeking a deserter in a first-class 
carriage. At Karachi, he was to buy white 
clothes and ship, if he could, on a cargo- 
steamer. 

Here he broke in. If I helped him to Karachi, 
he would arrange all the rest. Then I ordered 
him to wait w T here he was until it was dark 
enough for me to ride into the station without 
my dress being noticed. Now God in His wis- 
dom has made the heart of the British Soldier, 
who is very often an unlicked ruffian, as soft as 
the heart of a little child, in order that he may 
believe in and follow his officers into tight and 
nasty places. He does not so readily come to 
believe in a “ civilian ” but, when he does, he 
believes implicitly and like a dog. I had had 
the honor of the friendship of Private Ortheris, at 
intervals, for more than three years, and we had 
dealt with each other as man by man. Conse- 
quently, he considered that all my words were 
true, and not spoken lightly. 

Mulvaney and I left him in the high grass near 
the river-bank, and went away, still keeping to 


264 Plain Tales From the Hills 

the high grass, towards my horse. The shirt 
scratched me horribly. 

We waited nearly two hours for the dusk to 
fall and allow me to ride off. We spoke of Or- 
theris in whispers, and strained our ears to catch 
any sound from the spot where we had left him. 
But we heard nothing except the wind in the 
plume-grass. 

“ I’ve bruk his head,” said Mulvaney, earnest- 
ly, “time an’ agin. I’ve nearly kilt him wid the 
belt, an’ yet I can’t knock thim fits out ov his 
soft head. No ! An’ he’s not soft, for he’s rea- 
sonable an’ likely by natur’. Fwhat is ut ? Is 
ut his breedin’ which is nothin’, or his edukashin 
which he niver got ? You that think ye know 
things, answer me that.” 

But I found no answer. I was wondering 
how long Ortheris, in the bank of the river, ] 
would hold out, and whether I should be forced 
to ^dp him to desert, as I had given my 1 
word. 

Just as the dusk shut down and, with a very 
heavy heart, I was beginning to saddle up my 
horse, we heard wild shouts from the river. 

The devils had departed from Private Stanley , 
Ortheris, No. 22639, B. Company. The loneli- 
ness, the dusk, and the waiting had driven them 
out as I had hoped. We set off the double at 
and found him plunging about wildly through 
the grass, with his coat off — my coat off, I mean. 
He was calling for us like a madman. 

When we reached him, he was dripping with 
perspiration, and trembling like a startled horse. 
We had great difficulty in soothing him. He 
complained that he was in civilian kit, and 
wanted to tear my clothes off his body. I ordered 


Madness of Private Ortheris 265 

him to strip, and we made a second exchange as 
quickly as possible. 

The rasp of his own “grayback” shirt and the 
squeak of his boots seemed to bring him to him- 
self. He put his hands before his eyes and 
said : — 

“ Wot was it ? I ain’t mad, I ain’t sunstrook, 
an’ I’ve bin an’ gone an’ said, an’ bin an’ gone an’ 
done Wot ’ave I bin ’an done ! ” 

“Fwhat have you done?” said Mulvaney. 
“ You’ve dishgraced yourself — though that’s no 
matter. You’ve dishgraced B. Comp’ny, an’ 
worst av all, you’ve dishgraced Me ! Me that 
taught you how for to walk abroad like a man 
— when you was a dhirty little, fish-backed little, 
whimperin’ little recruity. As you are now, 
Stanley Orth’ris ! ” 

Ortheris said nothing for awhile. Then he 
unslung his belt, heavy with the badges of half- 
a-dozen regiments that his own had lain with, 
and handed it over to Mulvaney. 

“ I’m too little for to mill you, Mulvaney,” said 
he, “ an’ you’ve strook me before ; but you can 
take an’ cut me in two with this ’ere if you like.” 

Mulvaney turned to me. 

“ Lave me talk to him, Sorr,” said Mulvaney. 

I left, and on my way home thought a good 
deal over Ortheris in particular, and my friend, 
Private Thomas Atkins, whom I love, in general. 

But I could not come to any conclusion of any 
kind whatever. 


THE STORY OF MUHAMMAD DIN. 


“Who is the happy man? He that sees in his own house at 
home little children crowned with dust, leaping and falling and 
crying.” 

Munichandra , translated by Professor Peterson. 

The polo-ball was an old one, scarred, chipped, 
and dinted. It stood on the mantelpiece among 
the pipe-stems which Imam Din, khitmatgar , 
was cleaning for me. 

“ Does the Heaven-born want this ball ? ’’ said 
Imam Din deferentially.” 

The Heaven-born set no particular store by 
it ; but of what use was a polo-ball to a khit- 
in at gar ? 

“By your Honor’s favor, I have a little son. 
He has seen this ball, and desires it to play with. 
I do not want it lor myself.” 

No one would for an instant accuse portly old 
Imam Din of wanting to play with polo-balls. 
He carried out the battered thing into the ver- 
anda ; and there followed a hurricane of joyful 
squeaks, a patter of small feet, and the thud- 
thud-thud of the ball rolling along the ground. 
Evidently the little son had been waiting outside 
the door to secure his treasure. But how had 
he managed to see that polo-ball ? 

Next day, coming back from office half an 
hour earlier than usual, I was aware of a small 
figure in the dining-room — a tiny, plump figure 
in a ridiculously inadequate shirt which came, 
perhaps, half-way down the tubby stomach. It 
wandered round the room, thumb in mouth, 
266 


The Story of Muhammad Din 267 

crooning to itself as it took stock of the pictures. 
Undoubtedly this was the “ little son.” 

He had no business in my room, of course ; 
but was so deeply absorbed in his discoveries 
that he never noticed me in the doorway. I 
stepped into the room and startled him nearly 
into a fit. He sat down on the ground with a 
gasp. His eyes opened, and his mouth followed 
suit. I knew what was coming, and fled, fol- 
lowed by a long, dry howl which reached the 
servants’ quarters far more quickly than any 
command of mine had ever done. In ten seconds 
Imam Din was in the diningroom. Then de- 
spairing sobs arose, and I returned to find Imam 
Din admonishing the small sinner who was 
using most of his shirt as a handkerchief. 

“This boy,” said Imam Din, judicially, “is a 
budmash, a big budmash. He will, without 
doubt, go the jailkhana for his behavior.” Re- 
newed yells from the penitent, and an elaborate 
apology to myself from Imam Din. 

“ Tell the baby,” said I, “ that the Sahib is not 
angry, and take him away.” Imam Din conveyed 
my forgiveness to the offender, who had now 
gathered all his shirt round his neck, stringwise, 
and the yell subsided into a sob. The two set 
off for the door. “ His name,” said Imam Din, 
as though the name were part of the crime, “ is 
Muhammad Din, and he is a budmash." Freed 
from present danger, Muhammad Din turned 
round, in his father’s arms, and said gravely : — 
“ It is true that my name is Muhammad Din, 
Tahib, but I am not a budmash. I am a man ! " 

From that day dated my acquaintance with 
Muhammad Din. Never again did he come 
into my dining-room, but on the neutral ground 


268 Plain Tales From the Hills 


of the compound, we greeted each other with 
much state, though our conversation was con- 
fined to “ Talaam , Tahib ” from his side, and 
“ Salaam , Muhammad Din ,r from mine. Daily- 
on my return from office, the little white shirt, 
and the fat little body used to rise from the shade 
of the creeper-covered trellis where they had 
been hid ; and daily I checked my horse here, 
that my salutation might not be slurred over or 
given unseemly. 

Muhammad Din never had any companions. 
He used to trot about the compound, in and out 
of the castor-oil bushes, on mysterious errands 
of his own. One day I stumbled upon some of 
his handiwork far down the ground. He had 
half buried the polo-ball in dust, and stuck six 
shriveled old marigold flowers in a circle round 
it. Outside that circle again, was a rude square, 
traced out in bits of red brick alternating with 
fragments of broken china ; the whole bounded 
by a little bank of dust. The bhistie from the 
well-curb put in a plea for the small architect, 
saying that it was only the play of a baby and 
did not much disfigure my garden. 

Heaven knows that I had no "intention of 
touching the child’s work then or later ; but, that 
evening, a stroll through the garden brought me 
unawares full on it ; so that I trampled, before I 
knew, marigold-heads, dust-bank, and fragments 
of broken soap-dish into confusion past ail hope 
of mending. Next morning I came upon Muham- 
mad Din crying softly to himself over the ruin 
I had wrought. Some one had cruelly told him 
that the Sahib was very angry with him for 
spoiling the garden, and had scattered his rub- 
bish using bad language the while. Muhammad 


The Story of Muhammad Din 269 

Din labored for an hour at effacing every trace 
of the dust-bank and pottery fragments, and it 
was with a tearful and apologetic face that he 
said, “ Talaam Tcihib ,” when I came home from 
the office. A hasty inquiry resulted in Imam 
Din informing Muhammad Din that by my 
singular favor he was permitted to disport him- 
self as he pleased. Whereat the child took 
heart and fell to tracing the ground-plan of an 
edifice which was to eclipse the marigold-polo- 
ball creation. 

For some months, the chubby little eccentric- 
ity revolved in his humble orbit among the castor- 
oil bushes and in the dust ; always fashioning 
magnificent palaces from stale flowers thrown 
away by the bearer, smooth water-worn pebbles, 
bits of broken glass, and featfters pulled, I fancy, 
from my fowls — always alone and always croon- 
ing to himself. 

A gaily-spotted sea-shell was dropped one 
day close to the last of his little buildings ; and 
I looked that Muhammad Din should build 
something more than ordinarily splendid on the 
strength of it. Nor was I disappointed. He 
meditated for the better part of an hour, and his 
crooning rose to a jubilant song. Then he 
began tracing in dust. It would certainly be a 
wondrous palace, this one, for it was two yards 
long and a yard broad in ground-plan. But the 
palace was never completed. 

Next day there was no Muhammad Din at the 
head of the carriage-drive, and no “ Talaam 
Tahib ” to welcome my return. I had grown 
accustomed to the greeting, and its omission 
troubled me. Next day Imam Din told me that 
the child was suffering slightly from fever and 


270 Plain Tales From the Hills 

needed quinine. He got the medicine, and an 
English Doctor. 

“They have no stamina, these brats,” said the 
Doctor, as he left Imam Din’s quarters. 

A week later, though I would have given 
much to have avoided it, I met on the road to the 
Mussalman burying-ground Imam Din, accom- 
panied by one other friend, carying in his arms, 
wrapped in a white cloth, all that was left of 
little Muhammad Din. 


0 


ON THE STRENGTH OF A LIKENESS 

i 


0 


■ 

' 

. 
































ON THE STRENGTH OF A LIKENESS. 


If your mirror be broken, look into still water ; but have a care 
that you do not fall in. 


Hindu Proverb. 


Next to a requited attachment, one of the 
most convenient things that a young man can 
carry about with him at the beginning of his 
career, is an unrequited attachment. It makes 
him feel important and businesslike, and blase 
and cynical ; and whenever he has a touch of 
liver, or suffers from want of exercise, he can 
mourn over his lost love, and be very happy in a 
tender, twilight fashion. 

Hannasyde’s affair of the heart had been a 
Godsend to him. It was four years old, and the 
girl had long since given up thinking of it. She 
had married and had many cares of her own. 
In the beginning, she had told Hannasyde that, 
“ while she could never be anything more than 
a sister to him, she would always take the 
deepest interest in his welfare.” This startlingly 
new and original remark gave Hannasyde some- 
thing to think over for two years ; and his own 
vanity filled in the other twenty-four months. 
Hannasyde was quite different from Phil Gar- 
ron, but, none the less, had several points in 
common with that far too lucky man. 

He kept his unrequited attachment by him as 
men keep a well-smoked pipe — for comfort’s sake, 
and because it had grown dear in the using. It 
brought him happily through the Simla season. 
Hannasyde was not lovely. There was a crudity 

271 


272 Plain Tales From the Hills 

in his manners, and a roughness in the way in 
which he helped a lady on to her horse, that did 
not attract the other sex to him. Even if he had 
cast about for their favor, which he did not. I ' 
kept his wounded heart all to himself for a while. 

Then trouble came to him. All who go to 
Simla, know the slope from the Telegraph to the 
Public Works Office. Hannasyde was loafing 
up the hill, one September morning between 
calling hours, when a ’rickshaw came down in a 
hurry, and in the ’rickshaw sat the living, breath- 
ing image of the girl who had made him r 
happily unhappy. Hannasyde leaned againstV 
railings and gasped. He wanted to run down- 
hill after the ’rickshaw, but that was impossible ; 
so he went forward with most of his blood in his 
temples. It was impossible, for many reasons, 
that the woman in the ’rickshaw could be the 
girl he had known. She was, he discovered 
later, the wife of a man from Dindigul, or 
Coimbatore, or some out-of-the-way place, and 
she had come up to Simla early in the season for 
the good of her health. She was going back to 
Dindigul, or wherever it was, at the end of the 
season ; and in all likelihood would never return 
to Simla again, her proper Hill-station being 
Ootacamund. That night, Hannasyde, raw and 
savage from the raking up of all old feelings, 
took counsel with himself for one measured 
hour. What he decided upon was this ; and you 
must decide for yourself how much genuine 
affection for the old Love, and how much a very 
natural inclination to go abroad and enjoy him- 
self, affected the decision. Mrs. Landys-Haggert 
would never in all human likelihood cross his 
path again. So whatever he did didn’t much 


On the Strength of a Likeness 273 

matter. She was marvelously like the girl who 
“ took a deep interest " and the rest of the for- 
mula. All things considered, it would be pleas- 
ant to make the acquaintance of Mrs. Landys- 
Haggert, and for a little time — only a very little 
time — to make believe that he was with Alice. 

. Chisane again. Every one is more or less mad 
on one point. Hannasyde’s particular mono- 
mania was his old love, Alice Chisane. 

He made it his business to get introduced to 
Mrs. Haggert, and the introduction prospered. 
He also made it his business to see as much as 
he could of that lady. When a man is in earnest 
as to interviews, the facilities which Simla offers 
are startling. There are garden-parties, and 
tennis-parties, and picnics, and luncheons at 
Annandale, and rifle-matches, and dinners and 
balls ; besides rides and walks, which are mat- 
ters of private arrangement. Hannasyde had 
started with the intention of seeing a like- 
ness, and he ended by doing much more. He 
wanted to be deceived, he meant to be deceived, 
and he deceived himself very thoroughly. Not 
only were the face and figure, the face and figure 
of Alice Chisane, but the voice and lower tones 
were exactly the same, and so were the turns of 
speech ; and the little mannerisms, that every 
woman has, of gait and gesticulation, were 
absolutely and identically the same. The turn 
of the head was the same ; the tired look in the 
eyes at the end of a long walk was the same ; 

1 the stoop and wrench over the saddle to hold in 
a pulling horse was the same ; and once, most 
marvelous of all, Mrs. Landys-Haggert singing 
to herself in the next room, while Hannasyde 
was waiting to take her for a ride, hummed, 
18 


274 Plain Tales From the Hills 

note for note, with a throaty quiver of the voice 
in the second line “ Poor Wandering One /” 
exactly as Alice Chisane had hummed it for 
Hannasyde in the dusk of an English drawing- 
room. In the actual woman herself — in the soul 
of her — there was not the least likeness ; she and 
Alice Chisane being cast in different molds. 
But all that Hannasyde wanted to Enow and see 
and think about, was this maddening and per- 
plexing likeness of face and voice and manner. 
He was bent on making a fool of himself that 
way ; and he was in no sort disappointed. 

Open and obvious devotion from any sort of 
man is always pleasant to any sort of woman ; 
but Mrs. Landys-Haggert, being a woman of 
the world, could make nothing of Hannasyde’s 
admiration. 

He would take any amount of trouble — he was 
a selfish man habitually — to meet and forestall, 
if possible, her wishes. Anything she told him 
to do was law ; and he was, there could be no 
doubting it, fond of her company so long as she 
talked to him, and kept on talking about trivial- 
ities. But when she launched into expression of 
her personal views and her wrongs, those small 
social differences that make the spice of Simla 
life, Hannasyde was neither pleased nor inter- 
ested. He didn’t want to know anything about 
Mrs. Landys-Haggert, or her experiences in the 
past — She had traveled nearly all over the world, 
and could talk cleverly — he wanted the likeness 
of Alice Chisane before his eyes and her voice in 
his ears. Anything outside that, reminding him 
of another personality jarred, and he showed that 
it did. 

Under the new Post Office, one evening, Mrs. 


On the Strength of a Likeness 275 

Landys-Haggert turned on him, and spoke her 
j mind shortly and without warning, “ Mr. Han- 
nasyde,” said she, •* will you be good enough to 
explain why you have appointed yourself my 
special cavalier servente ? I don’t understand 
it. But I am perfectly certain, somehow or other, 
that you don’t care the least little bit in the world 
for me.” This seems to support, by the way, 
the theory that no man can act or tell lies to a 
woman without being found out. Hannasyde 
was taken off his guard. His defense never 
! was a strong one, because he was always think- 
ing of himself, and he blurted out, before he 
knew what he was saying, this inexpedient an- 
swer : — “ No more I do.” 

The queerness of the situation and the reply, 
made Mrs. Landys-Haggert laugh. Then it all 
came out ; and at the end of Hannasyde’s lucid 
explanation, Mrs. Haggert said, with the least 
touch of scorn in her voice : — tf So I’m to act as 
the lay-figure for you to hang the rags of your 
tattered affections on, am I ? ” 

Hannasyde didn’t see what answer was re- 
quired, and he devoted himself generally and 
vaguely to the praise of Alice Chisane, which 
was unsatisfactory. Now it is to be thoroughly 
made clear that Mrs. Haggert had not the 
shadow of a ghost of an interest in Hannasyde. 
Only .... only no woman likes being made 

love through instead of to specially on behalf 

of a musty divinity of four years’ standing. 

Hannasyde did not see that he had made any 
very particular exhibition of himself. He was 
glad to find a sympathetic soul in the arid wastes 
of Simla. 

When the season ended, Hannasyde went 


276 Plain Tales From the Hills 

down to his own place and Mrs. Haggert to 
hers. “ It was like making love to a ghost,”! 
said Hannasyde to himself, “ and it doesn’t mat- ! 
ter ; and now I’ll get to my work.” But he 
found himself thinking steadily of the Haggert- j 
Chisane ghost ; and he could not be certain 
whether it was Haggert or Chisane that made 
up the greater part of the pretty phantom. 

He got understanding a month later. 

A peculiar point of this peculiar country is the 
way in which a heartless Government transfers 
men from one end of the Empire to the other. 
You can never be sure of getting rid of a friend 
or an enemy till he or she dies. There was a 
case once — but that’s another story. 

Haggert’s Department ordered him up from 
Dindigul to the Frontier at two days’ notice, 
and he went through, losing money at every 
step, from Dindigul to his station. He dropped ! 
Mrs. Haggert at Lucknow, to stay with some 
friends there, to take part in a big ball at the 
Chutter Munzil, and to come on when he had 
made the new home a little comfortable. Luck-| 
now was Hannasyde’s station, and Mrs. Haggert 
stayed a week there. Hannasyde went to meet 
her. And when the train came in, he discovered 
which he had been thinking of for the past j 
month. The unwisdom of his conduct also 1 
struck him. The Lucknow week, with two i 
dances, and an unlimited quantity of rides to- | 
gether, clinched matters ; and Hannasyde found 
himself pacing this circle of thought : — He 
adored Alice Chisane— at least he had adored 
her. And he admired Mrs. Landys-Haggert 
because she was like Alice Chisane. But Mrs. 


On the Strength of a Likeness 277 

Landys-Haggert was not in the least like Alice 
Chisane, being a thousand times more adorable. 
Now Alice Chisane was “ the bride of another,” 
and so was Mrs. Landys-Haggert, and a good 
and honest wife too. Therefore , he, Hannasyde, 
was .... here he called himselt several hard 
names, and wished that he had been wise in the 
beginning. 

Whether Mrs. Landys-Haggert saw what was 
going on in his mind, she alone knows. He 
seemed to take an unqualified interest in every- 
thing connected with herself, as distinguished 
from the Alice-Chisane likeness, and he said one 
or two things which, if Alice Chisane had been 
still betrothed to him, could scarcely have been 
excused, even on the grounds of the likeness. 
But Mrs. Haggert turned the remarks aside, and 
spent a longtime in making Hannasyde see what 
a comfort and a pleasure she had been to him 
because of her strange resemblance to his old 
love. Hannasyde groaned in his saddle and 
said, “ Yes, indeed,” and busied himself with 
preparations for her departure to the Frontier, 
feeling very small and miserable. 

The last day of her stay at Lucknow came, 
and Hannasyde saw her off at the Railway Sta- 
tion. She was very grateful for his kindness 
and the trouble he had taken, and smiled pleas- 
antly and sympathetically as one who knew the 
Alice-Chisane reason of that kindness. And 
Hannasyde abused the coolies with the luggage, 
and hustled the people on the platform, and 
prayed that the roof might fall in and slay him. 

As the train went out slowly, Mrs. Landys- 
Haggert leaned out of the widow to say good- 
by : — “ On second thoughts ait revoir , Mr. Han- 


278 Plain Tales From the Hills 

nasyde. I go Home in the Spring, and perhaps 
I may meet you in Town.” 

Hannasyde shook hands, and said very ear- 
nestly and adoringly : — “ I hope to Heaven I 
shall never see your face again ! ” 

And Mrs. Haggert understood. 


WRESSLEY OF THE FOREIGN OFFICE 














WRESSLEY OF THE FOREIGN OFFICE. 


I closed and drew for my love’s sake. 

That now is false to me, 

And I slew the Riever of Tarrant Moss, 

And set Dumeny free. 

And ever they give me praise and gold, 

And ever I moan my loss, 

For I struck the blow for my false love’s sake, 

And not for the men at the Moss. 

Tarrant Moss. 

One of the many curses of our life out here is 
the want of atmosphere in the painter’s sense. 
There are no half-tints worth noticing. Men 
stand out all crude and raw, with nothing to 
tone them down, and nothing to scale them 
against. They do their work, and grow to think 
that there is nothing but their work, and nothing 
like their work, and that they are the real pivots 
on which the administration turns. Here is an 
instance of this feeling. A half-caste clerk was 
ruling forms in a Pay Office. He said to me : — 
“ Do you know what would happen if I added or 
took away one single line on this sheet ? ” Then, 
with the air of a conspirator : — “ It would dis- 
organize the whole of the Treasury payments 
throughout the whole of the Presidency Circle ! 
Think of that ? ” 

If men had not this delusion as to the ultra- 
importance of their own particular employments, 
I suppose that they would sit down and kill 
themselves. But their weakness is wearisome, 
particularly when the listener knows that he 
himself commits exactly the same sin. 

Even the Secretariat believes that it does good 

279 


280 Plain Tales From the Hills 


when it asks an over-driven Executive Officer to 
take a census of wheat-weevils through a dis- 
trict of five thousand square miles. 

There was a man once in the Foreign Office — 
a man who had grown middle-aged in the de- 
partment, and was commonly said, by irrever- 
ent juniors, to be able to repeat Aitchison’s 
“ Treaties and Sunnuds ” backwards, in his 
sleep. What he did with his stored knowledge 
only the Secretary knew ; and he, naturally, 
would not publish the news abroad. This man’s 
name was Wressley, and it was the Shibboleth, 
in those days, to say : — “ Wressley knows more 
about the Central Indian States than any living 
man.’* If you did not say this, you were con- 
sidered one of mean understanding. 

Now-a-days, the man who says that he knows 
the ravel of the inter-tribal complications across 
the Border is of more use ; but in Wressley ’s 
time, much attention was paid to the Central 
Indian States. They were called “ foci ” and 
“ factors," and all manner of imposing names. 

And here the curse of Anglo-Indian life fell 
heavily. When Wressley lifted up his voice, and 
spoke about such-and-such a succession to such- 
and-such a throne, the Foreign Office were silent, 
and Heads of Departments repeated the last two 
or three words of Wressley ’s sentences, and 
tacked “ yes, yes," on to them, and knew that 
they were “ assisting the Empire to grapple with 
serious political contingencies.” In most big 
undertakings, one or two men do the work while 
the rest sit near and talk till the ripe decorations 
begin to fall. 

Wressley was the working-member of the 
Foreign Office firm, and, to keep him up to his 


Wressley of the Foreign Office 281 

duties when he showed signs of flagging, he was 
made much of by his superiors and told what a 
fine fellow he was. He did not require coaxing, 
because he was of tough build, but what he re- 
ceived confirmed him in the belief that there was 
no one quite so absolutely and imperatively 
necessary to the stability of India as Wressley of 
the Foreign Office. There might be other good 
men, but the known, honored and trusted man 
among men was Wressley of the Foreign Office. 
We had a Viceroy in those days who knew 
exactly when to “gentle” a fractious big man, 
and to hearten up a collar-galled little one, and 
so keep all his team level. He conveyed to 
Wressley the impression which I have just set 
down ; and even tough men are apt to be dis- 
organized by a Viceroy’s praise. There was a 
case once but that is another story. 

All India knew Wressley’s name and office — 
it was in Thacker and Spink’s Directory — but 
who he was personally, or what he did, or what 
his special merits were, not fifty men knew or 
cared. His work filled all his time, and he 
found no leisure to cultivate acquaintances be- 
yond those of dead Rajput chiefs with Ahir blots 
in their scutcheons. Wressley would have made 
a very good Clerk in the Herald’s College had he 
not been a Bengal Civilian. 

Upon a day, between office and office, great 
trouble came to Wressley — overwhelmed him, 
knocked him down, and left him gasping as 
though he had been a little schoolboy. With- 
out reason, against prudence, and at a moment’s 
notice, he fell in love with a frivolous, golden- 
haired girl who used to tear about Simla Mall 
on a high, rough waler, with a blue velvet jockey- 


282 Plain Tales From the Hills 


cap crammed over her eyes. Her name was 
Venner — Tillie Venner — and she was delightful. 
She took Wressley’s heart at a hand-gallop, and 
Wressley found that it was not good for man 
to live alone ; even with half the Foreign Office 
Records in his presses. 

Then Simla laughed, for Wressley in love was 
slightly ridiculous. He did his best to interest 
the girl in himself — that is to say, his work — and 
she, after the manner of women, did her best to 
appear interested in what, behind his back, she 
called “ Mr. Wressley’s Wajahs ; ” for she 
lisped very prettily. She did not understand 
one little thing about them, but she acted as if 
she did. Men have married on that sort of error 
before now. 

Providence, however, had care of Wressley. 
He was immensely struck with Miss Venner’s 
intelligence. He would have been more im- 
pressed had he heard her private and confidential 
accounts of his calls. He held peculiar notions 
as to the wooing of girls. He said that the best 
work of a man’s career should be laid reverently 
at their feet. Ruskin writes something like this 
somewhere, I think ; but in ordinary life a few 
kisses are better and save time. 

About a month after he had lost his heart to 
Miss Venner, and had been doing his work vilely 
in consequence, the first idea of his “ Native 
Rule in Central India ” struck Wressley and 
filled him with joy. It was, as he sketched it, a 
great thing — the work of his life — a really com- 
prehensive survey of a most fascinating subject 
— to be written with all the special and labori- 
ously acquired knowledge of Wressley of the 
Foreign Office — a gift fit for an Empress. 


Wressley of the Foreign Office 283 

He told MissVenner that he was going to take 
leave, and hoped, on his return, to bring her a 
present worthy of her acceptance. Would she 
wait ? Certainly she would. Wressley drew 
seventeen hundred rupees a month. She would 
wait a year for that. Her Mama would help her 
to wait. 

So Wressley took one year’s leave and all the 
available documents, about a truck-load, that he 
could lay hands on, and went down to Central 
India with his notion hot in his head. He began 
his book in the land he was writing of. Too 
much official correspondence had made him a 
frigid workman, and he must have guessed that 
he needed the white light of local color on his 
palette. This is a dangerous paint for amateurs 
to play with. 

Heavens, how that man worked ! He caught 
his Rajahs, analyzed his Rajahs, and traced them 
up into the mists of Time and beyond, with their 
queens and their concubines. He dated and 
cross-dated, pedigreed and triple-pedigreed, 
compared, noted, connoted, wove, strung, sorted, 
selected, inferred, calendared and counter-calen- 
dared for ten hours a day. And, because this 
sudden and new light of Love was upon him, he 
turned those dry bones of history and dirty rec- 
ords of misdeeds into things to weep or to laugh 
over as he pleased. His heart and soul were at 
the end of his pen, and they got into the ink. 
He was dowered with sympathy, insight, humor 
and style for two hundred and thirty days and 
nights ; and his book was a Book. He had his 
vast special knowledge with him, so to speak ; 
but the spirit, the woven-in human Touch, the 
poetry and the power of the output, were beyond 


284 Plain Tales From the Hills 

all special knowledge. But I doubt whether he 
knew the gift that was in him then, and thus he 
may have lost some happiness. He was toiling 
for Tillie Venner, not for himself. Men often do 
their best work blind, for some one else’s sake. 

Also, though this has nothing to do with the 
story, in India where everyone knows every one 
else, you can watch men being driven, by the 
women who govern them, out of the rank-and- 
file and sent to take up points alone. A good 
man, once started, goes forward ; but an average 
man, so soon as the woman loses interest in his 
success as a tribute to her power, comes back to 
the battalion and is no more heard of. 

Wressley bore the first copy of his book to 
Simla and, blushing and stammering, presented 
it to Miss Venner. She read a little of it. I 
give her review verbatim : — “ Oh, your book ? 
It’s all about those how-wid Wajahs. I didn’t 
understand it.” 

Wressley of the Foreign Office was broken, 
smashed, — I am not exaggerating — by this one 
frivolous little girl. All that he could say feebly 
was : — “ But — but it’s my magnum opus ! The 
work of my life.” Miss Venner did not know 
what, magnum opus meant ; but she knew' that 
Captain Kerrington had won three races at the 
last Gymkhana. Wressley didn’t press her to 
w^ait for him any longer. He had sense enough 
for that. 

Then came the reaction after the year’s strain, 
and Wressley went back to the Foreign Office 
and his “Wajahs,” a compiling, gazetteering, 
report-writing hack, who would have been dear 
at three hundred rupees a month. He abided 


Wressley of the Foreign Office 285 

by Miss Venner’s review. Which proves that 
the inspiration in the book was purely temporary 
and unconnected with himself. Nevertheless, 
he had no right to sink, in a hill-tarn, five pack- 
ing-cases, brought up at enormous expense from 
Bombay, of the best book of Indian history ever 
written. 

When he sold off before retiring, some years 
later, I was turning over his shelves, and came 
across the only existing copy of “ Native Rule 
in Central India ” — the copy that Miss Venner 
could not understand. I read it, sitting on his 
mule-trunks, as long as the light lasted, and 
offered him his own price for it. He looked over 
my shoulder for a few pages and said to himself 
drearily : — 

“ Now, how in the world did I come to write 
such damned good stuff as that ? ” 

Then to me : — 

“Take it and keep it. Write one of your 
penny-farthing yarns about its birth. Perhaps 
— perhaps — the whole business may have been 
ordained to that end.” 

Which, knowing what Wressley of the Foreign 
Office was once, struck me as about the bitterest 
thing that I had ever heard a man say of his 
own work. 


BY WORD OF MOUTH. 

Not though you die to-night, O Sweet, and wail, 

A specter at my door, 

Shall mortal Fear make Love immortal fail — 

I shall but love you more, 

Who, from Death’s house returning, give me still 
One moment’s comfort in my matchless ill. 

Shadow Houses. 

This tale may be explained by those who know 
how souls are made, and where the bounds of 
the Possible are put down. I have lived long 
enough in this country to know that it is best to 
know nothing, and can only write the story as it 
happened. 

Dumoise was our Civil Surgeon at Meridki, 
and we called him “ Dormouse,” because he 
was a round little, sleepy little man. He was a 
good Doctor and never quarreled with any one, 
not even with our Deputy Commissioner, who 
had the manners of a bargee and the tact of a 
horse. He married a girl as round and as 
sleepy-looking as himself. She was a Miss Hil- 
lardyce, daughter of “ Squash ” Hillardyce of 
the Berars, who married his Chief’s daughter by 
mistake. But that is another story. 

A honeymoon in India is seldom more than a 
week long ; but there is nothing to hinder a 
couple from extending it over two or three years. 
This is a delightful country for married folk who 
are wrapped up in one another. They can live 
absolutely alone and without interruption — just 
as the Dormice did. These two little people 
retired from the w r orld after their marriage, and 
286 


By Word of Mouth 287 

were very happy. They were forced, of course, 
to give occasional dinners, but they made no 
friends hereby, and the Station -went its own 
way and forgot them ; only saying, occasionally, 
that Dormouse was the best of good fellows, 
though dull. A Civil Surgeon who never quar- 
rels is a rarety, appreciated as such. 

Few people can afford to play Robinson Crusoe 
anywhere — least of all in India, where we are 
few in the land, and very much dependent on 
each others’ kind offices. Dumoise was wrong 
in shutting himself from the world for a year, 
and he discovered his mistake when an epidemic 
of typhoid broke out in the Station in the heart 
of the cold weather, and his wife went down. 
He was a shy little man, and five days were 
wasted before he realized that Mrs. Dumoise 
was burning with something worse than simple 
fever, and three days more passed before he ven- 
tured to call on Mrs. Shute, the Engineer’s wife, 
and timidly speak about his trouble. Nearly 
every household in India knows that Doctors are 
very helpless in typhoid. The battle must be 
fought out between Death and the Nurses, min- 
ute by minute and degree by degree. Mrs. 
Shute almost boxed Dumoise’s ears for what she 
called his “criminal delay,” and went off at once 
to look after the poor girl. We had seven cases 
of typhoid in the Station that winter and, as the 
average of death is about one in every five cases, 
we felt certain that we should have to lose 
somebody. But all did their best. The women 
sat up nursing the women, and the men turned 
to and tended the bachelors who were down, 
and we wrestled with those typhoid cases for 
fifty-six days, and brought them through the 


288 Plain Tales From the Hills 


Valley of the Shadow in triumph. But, j'ust 
when we thought all was over, and were going 
to give a dance to celebrate the victory, little 
Mrs. Dumoise got a relapse and died in a week 
and the Station went to the funeral. Dumoise 
broke down utterly at the brink of the grave, 
and had to be taken away. 

After the death, Dumoise crept into his own 
house and refused to be comforted. He did his 
duties perfectly, but we all felt that he should 
go on leave, and the other men of his own Serv- 
ice told him so. Dumoise was very thankful for 
the suggestion — he was thankful for anything in 
those days — and went to Chini on a walking-tour. 
Chini is some twenty marches from Simla, in the 
heart of the Hills, and the scenery is good if you 
are in trouble. You pass through big, still 
deodar-forests, and under big, still cliffs, and 
over big, still grass-downs swelling like a 
woman’s breasts; and the wind across the grass, 
and the rain among the deodars says : — " Hush 
— hush — -hush.” So little Dumoise was packed 
off to Chini, to wear down his grief with a full- 
plate camera, and a rifle. He took also a use- 
less bearer, because the man had been his wife’s 
favorite servant. He was idle and a thief, but 
Dumoise trusted everything to him. 

On his way back from Chini, Dumoise turned 
aside to Bagi, through the Forest Reserve which 
is on the spur of Mount Huttoo. Some men 
who have traveled more than a little say that 
the march from Kotegarh to Bagi is one of the 
finest in creation. It runs through dark wet 
forest, and ends suddenly in bleak, nipped hill- 
side and black rocks. Bagi d&k-bungalow is 
open to all the winds and is bitterly cold. Few 


By Word of Mouth 289 

people go to Bagi. Perhaps that was the reason 
why Dumoise went there. He halted at seven 
in the evening, and his bearer went down the 
hill-side to the village to engage coolies for the 
next day’s march. The sun had set, and the 
night-winds were beginning to croon among the 
rocks. Dumoise leaned on the railing of the 
veranda, waiting for his bearer to return. The 
man came back almost immediately after he had 
disappeared, and at such a rate that Dumoise 
fancied he must have crossed a bear. He was 
running as hard as he could up the face of the 
hill. 

But there was no bear to account for his terror. 
He raced to the veranda and fell down, the 
blood spurting from his nose and his face iron- 
gray. Then he gurgled : — “ I have seen the 
Memsahib / I have seen the Memsahib ! ” 

“ Where ? ” said Dumoise. 

“ Down there, walking on the road to the 
village. She was in a blue dress, and she lifted 
the veil of her bonnet and said : — ‘ Ram Dass, 
give my salaams to the Sahib, and tell him that 
I shall meet him next month atNuddea.’ Then 
I ran away, because I was afraid.” 

What Dumoise said or did I do not know. 
Ram Dass declares that he said nothing, but 
walked up and down the veranda all the cold 
night, waiting for the Memsahib to come up the 
hill and stretching out his arms into the dark 
like a madman. But no Memsahib came, and, 
next day, he went on to Simla cross-questioning 
the bearer every hour. 

Ram Dass could only say that he had met Mrs. 
Dumoise and that she had lifted up her veil and 
given him the message which he had faithfully 

19 


290 Plain Tales From the Hills 

repeated to Dumoise. To this statement Ram 
Dasi adhered. He did not know where Nuddea 
was, had no friends at Nuddea, and would most 
certainly never go to Nuddea ; even though his 
pay were doubled. 

Nuddea is in Bengal, and has nothing what- 
ever to do with a Doctor serving in the Punjab. 
It must be more than twelve hundred miles from 
Meridki. 

Dumoise went through Simla without halting, 
and returned to Meridki there to take over charge 
from the man who had been officiating for him 
during his tour. There were some Dispensary 
accounts to be explained, and some recent orders 
of the Surgeon-General to be noted, and, al- 
together, the taking-over was a full day’s work. 
In the evening, Dumoise told his locum tcnens, 
who was an old friend of his bachelor days, what 
had happened at Bagi ; and the man said that 
Ram Dass might as well have chosen Tuticorin 
while he was about it. 

At that moment, a telegraph-peon came in 
with a telegram from Simla, ordering Dumoise 
not to take over charge at Meridki, but to go at 
once to Nuddea on special duty. There was a 
nasty outbreak of cholera at Nuddea, and the 
Bengal Government, being shorthanded, as usual, 
had borrowed a Surgeon from the Punjab. 

Dumoise threw the telegram across the table 
and said : — “ Well ? ” 

The other Doctor said nothing. It was all 
that he could say. 

Then he remembered that Dumoise had passed 
through Simla on his way from Bagi ; and thus 
might, possibly, have heard first news of the im- 
pending transfer. 


By Word of Mouth 291 

He tried to put the question, and he implied 
suspicion into words, but Dumoise stopped him 
with : — “ If I had desired that , I should never 
have come back from Chini. I was shooting 
there. I wish to live, for I have things to do. . . . 
but I shall not be sorry.” 

The other man bowed his head, and helped, 
in the twilight, to pack up Dumoise’s just opened 
trunks. Ram Dass entered with the lamps. 

“ Where is the Sahib going ? ” he asked. 

«* To Nuddea,” said Dumoise softly. 

Ram Dass clawed Dumoise’s knees and boots 
and begged him not to go. Ram Dass wept 
and howled till he was turned out of the room. 
Then he wrapped up all his belongings and came 
back to ask for a character. He was not going 
to Nuddea to see his Sahib die, and perhaps, to 
die himself. 

So Dumoise gave the man his wages and went 
down to Nuddea alone ; the other Doctor bidding 
him good-by as one under sentence of death. 

Eleven days later, he had joined his Mem- 
sahib ; and the Bengal Government had to bor- 
row a fresh Doctor to cope with that epidemic 
at Nuddea. The first importation lay dead in 
Chooadanga Dak-Bungalow. 


TO BE FILED FOR REFERENCE. 


By the hoof of the Wild Goat up-tossed 
From the Cliff where She lay in the Sun, 

Fell the Stone 

To the Tarn where the daylight is lost ; 

So She fell from the light of the Sun, 

And alone. 

Now the fall was ordained from the first, 

With the Goat and the Cliff and the Tam, 

But the Stone 

Knows only Her life is accursed, 

As She sinks in the depths of the Tam, 

And alone. 

Oh, Thou who hast builded the world, 

Oh, Thou who has lighted the Sun f 
Oh, Thou who hast darkened the Tarn ! 

Judge Thou 

The sin of the Stone that was hurled 
By the Goat from the light of the Sun, 

As She sinks in the mire of the Tam, 

Even now — even now — even now ! 

From the Unpublished Papers of McIntosh Jellaludin. 

“ Say is it dawn, is it dusk in thy Bower, 

Thou whom I long for, who longest for me ? 

Oh be it night — be it ” 

Here he fell over a little camel-colt that was 
sleeping in the Serai where the horse-traders and 
the best of the blackguards from Central Asia 
live ; and, because he was very drunk indeed 
and the night was dark, he could not rise again 
till I helped him. That was the beginning of 
my acquaintance with McIntosh Jellaludin. 
When a loafer, and drunk, sings The Song of the 
Bower, he must be worth cultivating. He got 
off the camel’s back and said, rather thickly : — 
“ I — I — I’m a bit screwed, but a dip in Log- 
292 


To be Filed for Reference 293 

gerhead will put me right again ; and, I say, 
have you spoken to Symonds about the mare’s 
knees ? ” 

Now Loggerhead was six thousand weary 
miles away from us, close to Mesopotamia, where 
you mustn’t fish and poaching is impossible, and 
Charley Symonds’ stable a half mile further across 
the paddocks. It was strange to hear all the old 
names, on a May night, among the horses and 
camels of the Sultan Caravanserai. Then the 
man seemed to remember himself and sober 
down at the same time. He leaned against the 
camel and pointed to a corner of the Serai where 
a lamp was burning : — 

“ I live there,” said he, “ and I should be ex- 
tremely obliged if you would be good enough to 
help my mutinous feet thither ; for I am more 
than usually drunk — most — most phenomenally 
tight. But not in respect to my head. * My 
brain cries out against ’ — how does it go ? But 

my head rides on the rolls on the dung-hill I 

should have said, and controls the qualm.” 

1 helped him through the gangs of tethered 
horses and he collapsed on the edge of the ve- 
randa in front of the line of native quarters. 

“ Thanks — a thousand thanks ! O Moon and 
little, little Stars ! To think that a man should 
so shamelessly .... Infamous liquor, too. 
Ovid in exile drank no worse. Better. It was 
frozen. Alas ! I had no ice. Good-night. I 
would introduce you to my wife were I sober — 
or she civilized.” 

A native woman came out of the darkness of 
the room, and began calling the man names ; so 
I went away. He was the most interesting loafer 
that I had had the pleasure of knowing for a long 


294 Plain Tales From the Hills 

time ; and later on, he became a friend of mine. 
He was a tall, well-built, fair man fearfully shaken 
with drink, and he looked nearer fifty than the 
thirty-five which, he said, was his real age. 
When a man begins to sink in India, and is not 
sent Home by his friends as soon as may be, he 
falls very low from a respectable point of view. 
By the time that he changes his creed, as did 
McIntosh, he is past redemption. 

In most big cities, natives will tell you of two 
or three Sahibs , generally low-caste, who have 
turned Hindu or Mussalman, and who live more 
or less as such. But it is not often that you can 
get to know them. As McIntosh himself used 
to say : — “ If I change my religion for my 
stomach’s sake, I do not seek to become a martyr 
to missionaries, nor am I anxious for notoriety.” 

At the outset of acquaintance McIntosh warned 
me : “ Remember this. I am not an object for 
charity. I require neither your money, your food, 
nor your cast-off raiment. I am that rare animal, 
a self-supporting drunkard. If you choose, I 
will smoke with you, for the tobacco of the bazars 
does not, I admit, suit my palate ; and I will 
borrow any books which you may not specially 
value. It is more than likely that I shall sell 
them for bottles of excessively filthy country- 
liquors. In return', you shall share such hospi- 
tality as my house affords. Here is a charpoy 
on which two can sit, and it is possible that there 
may, from time to time, be food in that platter. 
Drink, unfortunately, you will find on the prem- 
ises at any hour : and thus I make you welcome 
to all my poor establishments.” 

I was admitted to the McIntosh household — I 
and my good tobacco. But nothing else. Un- 


To be Filed for Reference 295 

luckily, one cannot visit a loafer in the Serai by 
day. Friends buying horses would not un- 
derstand it. Consequently, I was obliged to 
see McIntosh after dark. He laughed at this, 
and said simply: — “You are perfectly right. 
When I enjoyed a position in society, rather 
higher than yours, I should have done exactly 
the same thing, Good Heavens ! I was once ” — 
he spoke as though he had fallen from the Com- 
mand of a Regiment — “ an Oxford Man ! ” This 
accounted for the reference to Charley Symonds’ 
stable. 

“ You,” said McIntosh, slowly, “ have not had 
that advantage ; but, to outward appearance, you 
do not seem possessed of a craving for strong 
drinks. On the whole, I fancy that you are the 
luckier of the two. Yet I am not certain. You 
are — forgive my saying so even while I am smok- 
ing your excellent tobacco — painfully ignorant ol 
many things.” 

We were sitting together on the edge of his 
bedstead, for he owned no chairs, watching the 
horses being watered for the night, while the 
native woman was preparing dinner. I did not 
like being patronized by a loafer, but I was his 
guest for the time being, though he owned only 
one very torn alpaca-coat and a pair of trousers 
made out of gunny-bags. He took the pipe out 
of his mouth, and went on judicially : — “ All 
things considered, I doubt whether you are the 
luckier. I do not refer to your extremely limited 
classical attainments, or your excruciating quan- 
tities, but to your gross ignorance of matters 
more immediately under your notice. That for 
instance.” — He pointed to a woman cleaning a 
samovar near the well in the center ol the Serai. 


296 Plain Tales From the Hills 

She was flicking the water out of the spout in 
regular cadenced jerks. 

“ There are ways and ways of cleaning 
samovars. If you knew why she was doing her 
work in that particular fashion, you would know 
what the Spanish Monk meant when he said — 

' I the Trinity illustrate, 

Drinking watered orange-pulp — 

In three sips the Aryan frustrate, 

While he drains his at one gulp ’ — 

and many other things which now are hidden 
from your eyes. However, Mrs. McIntosh has 
prepared dinner. Let us come and eat after the 
fashion of the people of the country — of whom, 
by the way, you know nothing.” 

The native woman dipped her hand in the dish 
with us. This was wrong. The wife should 
always wait until the husband has eaten. McIn- 
tosh Jellaludin apologized, saying : — 

“It is an English prejudice which I have not 
been able to overcome ; and she loves me. Why, 
I have never been able to understand. I fore- 
gathered with her at Jullundur, three years ago, 
and she has remained with me ever since. I be- 
lieve her to be moral, and know her to be skilled 
in cookery.” 

He patted the woman’s head as he spoke, and 
she cooed softly. She was not pretty to look at. 

McIntosh never told me what position he had 
held before his fall. He was, when sober, a 
scholar and a gentleman. When drunk, he was 
rather more of the first than the second. He 
used to get drunk about once a week for two 
days. On those occasions the native woman 
tended him while he raved in all tongues except 
his own. One day, indeed, he began reciting 


To be Filed for Reference 297 

Atalanta in Calydon , and went through it to the 
end, beating time to the swing of the verse with 
a bedstead-leg. But he did most of his ravings 
in Greek or German. The man’s mind was a 
perfect rag-bag of useless things. Once, when 
he was beginning to get sober, he told me that I 
was the only rational being in the Inferno into 
which he had descended — a Virgil in the Shades, 
he said — and that, in return for my tobacco, he 
would, before he died, give me the materials of 
a new Inferno that should make me greater than 
Dante. Then he fell asleep on a horse-blanket 
and woke up quite calm. 

“ Man,” said he, “ when you have reached the 
uttermost depths of degradation, little incidents 
which would vex a higher life, are to you of no 
consequence. Last night, my soul was among 
the gods ; but I make no doubt that my bestial 
body was writhing down here in the garbage.” 

“You were abominably drunk if that’s what 
you mean,” I said. 

“ I was drunk — filthily drunk. I who am the 
son of a man with whom you have no concern 
— I who was once Fellow of a College whose 
buttery-hatch you have not seen. I was loath- 
somely drunk, flut consider how lightly I am 
touched. It is nothing to me. Less than noth- 
ing ; for I do not even feel the headache which 
should be my portion. Now, in a higher life, 
how ghastly would have been my punishment, 
how bitter my repentance ! Believe me, my 
friend with the neglected education, the highest 
is as the lowest — always supposing each degree 
extreme.” 

He turned round on the blanket, put his head 
between his fists and continued : — 


298 Plain Tales From the Hills 

“ On the Soul which I have lost and on the 
Conscience which I have killed, I tell you that I 
cannot feel ! I am as the gods, knowing good 
and evil, but untouched by either. Is this en- 
viable or is it not ? ” 

When a man has lost the warning of “ next 
morning’s head,” he must be in a bad state, I 
answered, looking at McIntosh on the blanket, 
with his hair over his eyes and his lips blue- 
white, that I did not think the insensibility good 
enough. 

“ For pity’s sake, don’t say that ! I tell you, it 
is good and most enviable. Think of my con- 
solations ! ” 

“ Have you so many, then, McIntosh ? ” 

“Certainly; your attempts at sarcasm which 
is essentially the weapon of a cultured man, are 
crude. First, my attainments, my classical and 
literary knowledge, blurred, perhaps, by im- 
moderate drinking — which reminds me that be- 
fore my soul went to the Gods last night, I sold 
the Pickering Horace you so kindly lent me. 
Ditta Mull the clothesman has it. It fetched ten 
annas, and may be redeemed for a rupee — but 
still infinitely superior to yours. Secondly, the 
abiding affection of Mrs. McIntosh, best of wives. 
Thirdly, a monument, more enduring than brass, 
which I have built up in the seven years of my 
degradation.” 

He stopped here, and crawled across the room 
for a drink of water. He was very shaky and 
sick. 

He referred several times to his “ treasure ” — 
some great possession that he owned — but I held 
this to be the raving of drink. He was as poor 
and as proud as he could be. His manner was 


To be Filed for Reference 299 

not pleasant, but he knew enough about the 
natives, among whom seven years of his life had 
been spent, to make his acquaintance worth hav- 
ing. He used actually to laugh at Strickland as 
an ignorant man — “ignorant West and East” — 
he said. His boast was, first, that he was an 
Oxford Man of rare and shining parts, which 
may or may not have been true — I did not know 
enough to check his statements — and, secondly, 
that he “ had his hand on the pulse of native 
life ” — which was a fact. As an Oxford man, he 
struck me as a prig : he was always throwing 
his education about. As a Mahommedan faqidr 
— as McIntosh Jellaludin — he was all that I 
wanted for my own ends. He smoked several 
pounds of my tobacco, and taught me several 
ounces of things worth knowing ; but he would 
never accept any gifts, not even when the cold 
weather came, and gripped the poor thin chest 
under the poor thin alpaca-coat. He grew very 
angry, and said that I had insulted him, and 
that he was not going into hospital. He had 
lived like a beast and he would die rationally, 
like a man. 

As a matter of fact, he died of pneumonia ; 
and on the night of his death sent over a grubby 
note asking me to come and help him to die. 

The native woman was weeping by the side of 
the bed. McIntosh, wrapped in a cotton cloth, 
was too weak to resent a fur coat being thrown 
over him. He was very active as far as his mind 
was concerned, and his eyes were blazing. 
When he had abused the Doctor who came with 
me, so foully that the indignant old fellow left, 
he cursed me for a few minutes and calmed 
down. 


300 Plain Tales From the Hills 

Then he told his wife to fetch out “ The 
Book” from a hole in the wall. She brought out 
a big bundle, wrapped in the tail of a petticoat, 
of old sheets of miscellaneous note-paper, all 
numbered and covered with fine cramped writ- 
ing. McIntosh plowed his hand through the 
rubbish and stirred it up lovingly. 

“ This,” he said, “ is my work — the Book of 
McIntosh Jelialudin, showing what he saw and 
how he lived, and what befell him and others ; 
being also an account of the life and sins and 
death of Mother Maturin. What Mirza Murad 
Ali Beg’s book is to all other books on native life, 
will my work be to Mirza Murad Ali Beg’s ! ” 

This, as will be conceded by any one who 
knows Mirza Murad Ali Beg’s book, was a sweep- 
ing statement. The papers did not look specially 
valuable ; but McIntosh handled them as if they 
were currency notes. Then said he slowly : — 

“ In despite the many weaknesses of your 
education, you have been good to me. I will 
speak of your tobacco when I reach the Gods. I 
owe you much thanks for many kindnesses. But 
I abominate indebtedness. For this reason I 
bequeath to you now the monument more en- 
during than brass — my one book — rude and im- 
perfect in parts, but oh, how rare in others ! I 
wonder if you will understand it. It is a gift 
more honorable than . . . Bah 1 where is my 
brain rambling to ? You will mutilate it hor- 
ribly. You will knock out the gems you call 
‘ Latin quotations,’ you Philistine, and you will 
butcher the style to carve into your own jerky 
jargon ; but you cannot destroy the whole of it. 
I bequeath it to you. Ethel . . . My brain 
again ! . , Mrs. McIntosh, bear witness that I 


To be Filed for Reference 301 

gave the Sahib all these papers. They would be 
of no use to you, Heart of my Heart ; and I lay 
it upon you,” he turned to me here, “that you do 
not let my book die in its present form. It is 
yours unconditionally — the story of McIntosh 
Jellaludin, which is not the story of McIntosh 
Jellaludin, but of a greater man than he, and 
of a far greater woman. Listen now ! I am 
neither mad nor drunk 1 That book will make 
you famous.” 

I said, “ thank you,” as the native woman put 
the bundle into my arms. 

“ My only baby ! ” said McIntosh with a smile. 
He was sinking fast, but he continued to talk as 
long as breath remained. I waited for the end : 
knowing that, in six cases out of ten the dying 
man calls for his mother. He turned on his 
side and said : — 

“ Say how it came into your possession. No 
one will believe you, but my name, at least, will 
live. You will treat it brutally, I know you will. 
Some of it must go ; the public are fools and 
prudish fools. I was their servant once. But do 
your mangling gently — very gently. It is a 
great work, and I have paid for it in seven years’ 
damnation.” 

His voice stopped for ten or twelve breaths, 
and then he began mumbling a prayer of some 
kind in Greek. The native woman cried very 
bitterly. Lastly, he rose in bed and said, as 
loudly as slowly : — “ Not guilty, my Lord ! ” 

Then he fell back, and the stupor held him till 
he died. The native woman ran into the Serai 
among the horses and screamed and beat her 
breasts ; for she had loved him. 

Perhaps his last sentence in life told what Me- 


302 Plain Tales From the Hills 

Intosh had once gone through ; but, saving the 
big bundle of old sheets in the cloth, there was 
nothing in his room to say who or what he had 
been. 

The papers were in a hopeless muddle. 

Strickland helped me to sort them, and he said 
that the writer was either an extreme liar or a 
most wonderful person. He thought the former. 
One of these days, you may be able to judge for 
yourselves. The bundle needed much expurga- 
tion and was full of Greek nonsense, at the head 
of the chapters, which has all been cut out. 

If the thing is ever published, some one may 
perhaps remember this story, now printed as a 
safeguard to prove that McIntosh Jellaludin and 
not I myself wrote the Book of Mother Maturin. 

I don't want the Giant's Robe to come true in 
my case. 


THE END, 


RUDYARD KIPLING’S PORTRAIT 


INSTRUCTIONS. Send the fifteen coupons, numbered 
Volumes I to XV, to the publishers, The Lovell Com- 
pany, 23 Duane Street, New York, and they will send 
you the above portrait, post-paid, free of all charge. 





\ 







